Oregon Officials Tell Trump to ‘Stay the Hell Out’ of Portland

Officials in Oregon over the weekend were united in their opposition to Donald Trump’s declaration that he would be surging troops into Portland, with Sen. Ron Wyden telling the president that he should “stay the hell out” of the city.

At a press conference Saturday, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek was flanked by most of the state’s congressional delegation, who all pushed back on the idea that National Guard soldiers were needed to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.

“There is no insurrection. There is no threat to national security. And there is no need for military troops in our major city,” Kotek said, adding that she had spoken directly with Trump and conveyed her reticence about his plans to escalate the situation.

“Our city is a far cry from the war ravaged community that he has posted about on social media,” she said, summing up what she told the president. Kotek also said that she had spoken with Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois to get an idea of how those states dealt with Trump’s deployments.

Just hours earlier, Trump suggested that the city was “war ravaged” and “under siege” by antifascist activists.

“At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, 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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added, without clarifying what the use of “full force” on an American city means in practice — or sharing a timeline for any potential deployment.

A White House official responded to NOTUS’ request for comment with a list of recent protests and alleged illegal activity outside of ICE’s field office in Portland.

Several speakers at Saturday’s press conference addressed where they thought Trump’s apocalyptic vision of Portland was coming from: Out-of-context video clips posted to social media of the city’s chaotic Black Lives Matter protest movement of 2020-2021.

“I’ve been so deeply disappointed to see the footage from a half decade ago recycled and then recycled again,” Mayor Keith Wilson, a Democrat, said. “If President Trump came to Portland today, what he would find is people riding their bikes, playing sports, enjoying the sunshine, buying groceries or produce from a farmers market.”

Crime in Portland, as in many major cities across the country, has come down over the past few years from its post-pandemic highs. According to city data, homicides are down 50% from the same period last year, burglaries are down 11% and aggravated assaults are down 4%.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, standing alongside fellow Oregon Democratic Reps. Maxine Dexter, Janelle Bynum and Andrea Salinas, said that she visited one of the ICE facilities being toted as “under siege” by the president last week and found no protesters or problems to speak of.

Wyden also made the same point in a post on X, in which he shared a video of empty streets outside the city’s ICE detention center.

“I was at the ICE facility a couple of days ago,” Bonamici said. “I was in Portland yesterday on the east side for a meeting and last night for an event. Nowhere did I see one single indication that we need military troops here.”

“I strongly oppose this action by the President, and I thank the governor and the mayor for their words,” she added.

Her solution was to instead use the money being allocated for a military deployment and spend it on services that the local community could use to grow its economy and address the root causes of crime.

“There are so many things you could be doing to help Portland,” she said. “You could let us hire back the federal employees you fired. You could send us the dollars that Congress appropriated for infrastructure, for housing, for education. Those are things that will help Portland. Sending military troops here will not.”