Protests in Portland, Oregon, continued on Thursday night, with locals clashing with officials and rightwing provocateurs, amid the latest federal deployment by the Trump administration.
A rightwing commentator was arrested and briefly detained by local officials after allegedly engaging in a fight outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility, local police said. Nick Sortor, a rightwing commentator who regularly visits protest sites to record videos, was released on Friday morning.
“You PROVED what we’ve all been saying for years: you’re CORRUPT and CONTROLLED by violent Antifa thugs who terrorize the streets,” Sortor posted on X in a message to the local Portland police.
Another rightwing commentator said he spoke with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, who promised a “surge” of Ice resources in Portland following Sortor’s arrest.
For the past few weeks, protesters in Portland have been demonstrating outside of the Ice facility in opposition to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies. In response – despite fervent opposition by local leaders – the Trump administration had pledgedto deploy national guard troops on federal orders and federal officials to the city.
A coalition of 17 mayors in the state are opposing the deployment. Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, filed a lawsuit fighting the activation of 200 federalized members of the Oregon national guard. A federal judge will hear arguments on Friday on whether to temporarily block the troop deployment.
For years, Donald Trump has promoted an inaccurate narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chronic chaos. In late September, the president designated “antifa” as a “major terrorist organization”. Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is not a centralized organization in the US but closer to an ideology with a loose network of activists.
During his first administration in 2020, Trump deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police in Minneapolis of George Floyd. The protests spread nationwide and internationally but were especially politically polarized in Portland as it became the site of rightwing gatherings, counterprotests and clashes. This year protests against aggressive operations by Ice have been small in Portland, but Trump has used them as justification to deploy troops.
The administration has deployed federal forces to major Democrat-run cities around the US. Earlier this year, Trump deployed troops to Los Angeles in response to protests over immigration raids, and to Washington DC to address crime, despite the city’s improving record on that issue. The Trump administration has also deployed a surge of immigration officials to Chicago and threatened to deploy troops there and to other cities around the US, having deployed to Memphis, Tennessee.
