WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Saturday (Sep 27) said he was directing the US military to deploy to Portland, Oregon and to protect federal immigration facilities against “domestic terrorists”, saying he was authorising them to use “full force, if necessary”.
Ordering the latest crackdown on a Democrat-led city, Trump said in a social media post that he was directing Defense Secretary 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”.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, responding to Trump’s order, said: “The number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city. The president will not find lawlessness or violence here unless he plans to perpetrate it.”
Violent crime in Portland has dropped in the first six months of 2025, data show. Homicides fell by 51 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier, according to data released by the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s Midyear Violent Crime Report. That report showed Portland had 17 homicides in the period compared with 56 in Louisville, Kentucky, and 124 in Memphis, Tennessee, which have comparable population sizes.
In a press conference on Saturday, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, a Democrat, rejected the need for troops and said she spoke with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“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.
“I’m going to continue communicating that to the president, and I hope he will be open to reconsidering the deployment.”
US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, wrote on X that Trump “may be replaying the 2020 playbook and surging into Portland with the goal of provoking conflict and violence”.
In 2020, protests erupted in downtown Portland, the Pacific Northwest enclave with a reputation as a liberal city, following the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd. The protests dragged on for months and some civic leaders at the time said they were spurred rather than quelled by Trump’s deployment of federal troops.
