On September 29, Chief Bob Day of the Portland Police Bureau expressed bewilderment as to why President Donald Trump has ordered the National Guard to the Oregon city.
“This is one city block,” he said of the neighborhood where an ICE detention Center is located, the site of peaceful protests. “The city of Portland is 145 square miles. And even the events that are happening down there do not rise to the level of attention that they are receiving.”
Trump begs to differ. “I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” he wrote in a September 27 Truth Social post. He added, chillingly, that he’s “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
Annie Hood, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, drives by the protest every day on her way to work. “The ICE protests have been focused now in a pretty discreet part of the South waterfront,” Hood told Filter. She said she’d read somewhere that Trump had decided the ICE protests warrant a military crackdown after seeing footage of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. “He got confused, perhaps.”
“Sending in 200 National Guard troops to guard a single building is not normal.”
Governor Tina Kotek (D) and 17 mayors from across Oregon, including Portland Mayor Keith Wilson (D), have denounced Trump’s order, which would station 200 troops in the city. Trump claimed in an October 1 social media post that that troops were already “in place” there—a claim swiftly refuted by local reporting, with indications that it could take several more days.
The state and city have meanwhile filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
“Oregon communities are stable, and our local officials have been clear: We have the capacity to manage public safety without federal interference,” Attorney General Rayfield said in announcing the suit on September 28. “Sending in 200 National Guard troops to guard a single building is not normal. If you had a concern about safety at your own home, you’d make a few calls and fill the gaps —not call in an army.”
Rayfield observed there might be more at play than deep-seated concern for the wellbeing of Portland’s residents. “What we’re seeing is not about public safety, it’s about the President flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”
Hood, who has long worked with vulnerable populations, is nervous about what a National Guard deployment would mean for unhoused people and people who use drugs in Portland, for whom the environment has already worsened.
“Oregon has been a complicated place to be unhoused in the past few years,” she said. “Recriminalization has led to a focus on liveability crimes.”
“Any time you have more policing, vulnerable people are impacted first,” Hood added.
“This approach is a weaponization of law enforcement against people in crisis.”
Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Policing Equity, agrees that Trump’s militarized campaigns create the opposite of “public safety,” especially for marginalized groups.
“These continued actions by the Trump Administration, despite decreasing rates of crime, nullify the will of voters and local elected officials,” he told Filter. “It replaces local accountability with a system of federal force, escalating conflict and endangering the very communities and officers it claims to protect.”
“Furthemore, this approach is a weaponization of law enforcement against people in crisis,” Solomon continued. “These deployments will harm housing-insecure people, as well as those suffering from mental health issues, treating them as enemies to be eradicated from society, rather than neighbors in need of support and care. Make no mistake, this is the politics of division and domination, not that of safety.”
In June, over the fervent objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the Trump administration sent troops to Los Angeles, where they hassled protestors and unhoused people, and held something resembling a military parade in a park.
In August, federal agents and National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, DC—where they busted people for open alcohol containers and marijuana use, clogged federal courts with low-level cases, and spooked residents enough to empty restaurants and bars.
Trump next threatened Chicago, among other cities, but first opted for Memphis, Tennessee, since he finally managed to find a welcoming local official: Gov. Bill Lee (R). Harm reduction activists in Memphis have drafted survival guides for the vulnerable people most likely to be targeted. Federal officers began making arrests there on September 30.
“It’s a war from within.”
All signs point to Trump further ramping up his campaign against blue cities.
In an unprecedented address to 800 top military officials on September 30, summoned from around the world by “Secretary of War” Hegseth, Trump made an ominous declaration about the military’s future role in US cities.
“The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats—what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles—they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” he said, to the largely silent auditorium.
“And this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”
Photograph via Picryl