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President Donald Trump has dispatched federal agents to Portland, local elected officials said in a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday night. Those agents have amassed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront and other locations across the city, officials said.
“We now have a sudden influx of federal agents in our city,” Mayor Keith Wilson said. “We did not ask for them to come. They are here without precedent or purpose.”
Over and over, officials described the agents’ arrival as an attempt to goad residents into a confrontation that would give the president a pretext for a military crackdown.
And they repeated a single instruction to residents: Don’t take the bait.
“This is the ‘Don’t take the bait’ press conference,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). “Their goal is to create an engagement—an engagement that will lead to conflict. President Trump has one goal. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as. Let’s not grant him that wish.”
The phalanx of local officials assembled at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Northeast Portland—ranging from the majority of city councilors to two members of Congress—admitted they weren’t sure whether the federal ingress into Portland consisted of military officers or merely agents from the Federal Protective Service.
When asked by the press how he knew the federal presence had increased, Wilson replied: “Yesterday, a memorandum from the White House singled out Portland and Los Angeles. We have armored vehicles on the streets of Portland and reported agents throughout our community.”
City officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WW that they had observed the sudden surge of federal agents in the city over the past 48 hours, including some at the ICE headquarters and others filmed arriving in an armored vehicle by KPTV.
One city official said the influx marked a “significant escalation” of the federal presence in Portland. The official said the deployment consisted of 100 to 150 agents or officers, a helicopter, and a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, commonly known as a MRAP.
Several officials told WW that they believed the arrival of federal officers was a harbinger of future deployment of the National Guard to Portland—the FPS was the first agency on the ground in other cities where Trump later deployed the National Guard, they said.
Merkley said that he and other members of Oregon’s congressional delegation had spoken to ICE officials earlier Friday about stories in The Oregonian in which an assistant Portland police chief alleged federal agents were “instigating” conflict with protesters. Merkley said an ICE official told him that the agents in question were not ICE agents but the Federal Protective Service.
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly threatened to send federal troops to Portland, which he described as “anarchy”—a characterization which appeared largely based on occasional conflict between ICE agents and protesters on three blocks surrounding the agency’s building.
Councilor Eric Zimmerman, a military veteran, spoke to federal agents in their jargon.
“Here’s your SITREP: Situation normal in Portland,” he said. “We do not need your assistance. Please go away.”
U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Oregon) addressed her message to Portlanders. “The Portland we love does not want federal agents,” Dexter said. “Do not give Trump’s federal agents an excuse to hurt our community.”
A question-and-answer period at the end of the press event came to a sudden end as protesters who have long confronted ICE in the South Waterfront berated the assembled officials for an insufficient response.
“We have been peaceful,” one yelled. “We’ve been begging for your help, and you haven’t been doing anything!”
