Dear President Trump: Portland Is Not Your War Zone

The announcement arrived with theatrical certainty. Troops would go to Portland to protect federal immigration facilities. “Full force, if necessary.” The words were meant to settle the matter and to set the scene. Portland, the script insists, is a place of permanent disorder. The city’s answer was simple. Calm streets, improving crime metrics, and no emergency that justifies soldiers. That clash of frames is the real story. It is not only about one weekend, one building, or one President. It is about how federal power is narrated, how cities are chosen as stages, and how a state with long practice in saying no prepares for the next round.

The question is why now. The events at the South Waterfront ICE site in June offer the easiest pretext. A door breached. Officers injured. Crowd control munitions fired from the roof and driveway. A riot declaration by city police. Those facts are real, and they matter. They do not describe a citywide collapse. They do not describe a wave of arsons or large armed groups roaming neighborhoods. They describe a facility centered conflict with sharp spikes and long quiet stretches.

They also describe a pattern Portland has seen before. The federal building becomes the magnet. Federal agencies arrive with an expansive reading of their protective mandate. Tactics drift away from the property line. Lawsuits and politics follow. The most recent order takes that pattern and elevates it. It recasts a limited flashpoint as an open question of national authority, then folds Portland into a larger crackdown narrative that treats immigration enforcement sites as the decisive front. The timing speaks political first, operational second.

To understand how we arrived here, return to the summer of 2020. Downtown Portland saw the largest federal operation in its modern history, conducted under color of facility protection. The Department of Homeland Security assembled cross-component teams from Federal Protective Service, Customs and Border Protection, including BORTAC, ICE, and the US Marshals Service.

Use Portland again as proof of concept, not because it is uniquely chaotic, but because it is symbolically potent.

The Inspector General’s accounting later put the number of federal officers at several hundred and the price tag in the millions. The Inspector General also concluded that DHS had legal authority to deploy but was unprepared to coordinate cross-component planning and training at scale. That judgment matters because it captures the heart of the dispute in Portland—not whether the government can protect its own buildings. It can.

The question is how far officials can push off the property line in the name of that protection, and how well prepared they are to do so without inflaming the scene.

The 2020 playbook is familiar now. Agents in camouflage using unmarked vans made detentions away from the courthouse perimeter. Officers used less lethal munitions heavily, and not only at the fence line. Journalists and legal observers sought court orders to limit specific tactics. The city and state condemned the off-site stops as escalatory, and the Governor negotiated a handoff that put Oregon State Police in the outer ring while federal officers pulled back into a tighter footprint around the building.

In September 2020, the US Marshals and the US Attorney kept dozens of local police and county deputies federally deputized over city objections, extending federal charging leverage through the end of the year. The Guard appeared twice in Portland that year, and its mission was narrow. Intersection support after a riot declaration. Unarmed presence emphasized. In January 2021, after warnings about possible armed protests at state capitols, the Guard protected the State Capitol in Salem rather than patrolling Portland’s streets.

Everything about today’s dispute sits in the shadow of that summer. Not because crowds are the same size. They are not. Not because tactics have changed beyond recognition. They have not. It sits in the shadow of 2020 because that is when the lines were drawn and the memory was made. Federal facility protection became the stated hook for a much larger crowd control posture. Local leaders learned that the fastest way to shrink a conflagration is to narrow the geography and the mission. Civil society learned it could document and litigate tactical overreach successfully. The public learned to discount images of a fence line melee as representative of the city as a whole. Each lesson returns now, and each lesson shapes what happens next.

However, it would be a mistake to read the present move only as a backward glance. There is also a clear shift in presidential rhetoric and claimed authority. In September 2020, a nationally televised town hall produced a candid sentence about constraints. A President cannot “call in the National Guard” to a state unless the Governor requests it, the argument went, absent an Insurrection Act step that even then was described as unwarranted. In 2025, the frame is permission rather than constraint. The city is described by the president as "war ravaged." Opponents are labeled domestic terrorists. The promise is to defend ICE with full force. The legal architecture underneath those words is not laid out in detail, but the intention is plain. Expand the perimeter of federal insistence. Treat immigration infrastructure as a national security zone. Use Portland again as proof of concept, not because it is uniquely chaotic, but because it is symbolically potent.

That choice meets a state that is primed to resist. Oregon’s political leadership has already signaled that it will challenge deployments it sees as unnecessary or unlawful. The record is long. In 2020 the Governor criticized federal tactics as escalatory and insisted on a state controlled outer ring. The city documented chemical munitions use and helped secure orders protecting journalists and legal observers. Plaintiffs sued and settlements followed. Prosecutors and judges adapted. Police policy changed. When the latest announcement framed Portland as a place besieged, the state replied with data. Homicides down. Streets quiet. No justification for troops. That is the essence of Oregon’s resistance to this script. It blends political standing with institutional memory and civil society vigilance. That mix makes broad federal shows of force harder to justify and harder to sustain.

There is another level to this confrontation. Geography and precedent. Portland sits inside a north-south chain of high salience immigration sites. San Diego to Santa Barbara to the Bay Area to Tacoma to Seattle. If Washington can normalize a hardened federal posture at the Portland ICE complex, it sets a precedent that will be cited along the coast when protests recur. The stakes are not how many boots walk a given block on a given night. The stakes are whether federal forces can define the rules near ICE facilities regardless of local assessment. If that becomes the norm in Portland, it becomes much easier to argue that it should be the norm everywhere else. The order that pulled Portland into the spotlight did not pretend to be only local. It explicitly tied the move to a national immigration crackdown. That is why Oregon’s reply matters beyond Oregon.

Much of the public conversation has blurred two distinct questions. What has happened, and what might happen. The first question is a matter of public record. A spike in protests in June outside the ICE facility, and a riot declaration by city police after a door breach and injuries. City notices about chemical munitions and a later land use dispute over overnight detention at the ICE site. Reports of new federal officers arriving in September. A presidential announcement of troops with the phrase "full force." A state and city reply that the ground is quiet and that there is no emergency. Those are the facts. They show flashpoints surrounded by long periods of calm. They do not show a citywide breakdown.

The second question is where law and strategy meet. If soldiers appear only inside federal boundaries, their presence will still be contested politically, but the immediate legal exposure is smaller. If soldiers or federal officers begin detaining people off site, if unmarked vehicles reappear, or if chemical munitions are used widely on city streets, litigation will move quickly and aggressively. If federal prosecutors again rely on mass deputization to extend charging leverage, the city will fight, and courts will revisit the constraints they began to draw in 2020. Portland Police and Oregon State Police will likely maintain a careful separation from federal tactics near the ICE facility. That is not only a choice of optics. It is a choice driven by legal risk and institutional learning. The default will be a lower profile, clearer lines, and an emphasis on deescalation. If militia style groups arrive looking for confrontation, the risk of rapid escalation rises even if most city blocks remain calm. That is the volatility at the edge of the playbook.

How will Oregonians respond? The evidence points to large but mostly peaceful demonstrations centered on the ICE facility, with legal observers on scene and community organizations supplying support. It also points to a consistent effort by local media and civic leaders to distinguish federal militarization from local public safety. That distinction mattered in 2020, and it matters now. It explains why images of a clash on one block do not translate into citywide fear. It explains why the phrase city under siege does not hold across more than a few news cycles. It explains why the political cost of overreach is higher here than in many other places.

The more the city looks like a stage, the easier it becomes to script what happens on it.

The Oregon National Guard sits at the center of another misunderstanding. The Guard has indeed appeared in this story. The appearances have been narrow. In June of 2020, Guard members supported local authorities with an emphasis on unarmed roles. On November 4 and 5, after a riot declaration, Guard troops stood at intersections to stabilize traffic and dispersal. In January of 2021, they protected the State Capitol in Salem after FBI warnings of possible armed protests at all 50 state capitols. That is the pattern. Limited. Defensive. Time-bound. Under state command. The present question is not whether the Guard can maintain that posture under the Governor’s authority. It can. The present question is whether Washington can or will seek to federalize the Guard, or to place Title 10 troops in roles that drift beyond federal property protection. If that occurs, expect open resistance from state leadership and a legal fight over thresholds that will not resolve quietly.

Any account of this moment needs to say something about the words used to describe Oregon’s people. Revisit the record. In 2020, Portland was often portrayed as a nest of anarchists and professional agitators. The city was treated as a visual shorthand for disorder. Yet even then, when pressed on the precise authority to send the Guard without a Governor’s request, the answer was constraint. In 2025, the language is sharper and the limits are fuzzier. The city is "war ravaged." Opponents are domestic terrorists. Troops will defend ICE with full force. The people who live in Oregon do not recognize themselves in that portrait, and that is the point. The portrait is not meant to reflect them. It is meant to justify a posture toward them. The more the city looks like a stage, the easier it becomes to script what happens on it.

Taken together, these threads show a contest with three fronts. Authority. Narrative. Precedent. Authority is the set of statutes and orders that define who commands whom, where lines are drawn, and when a judge can say no. Narrative is the map of words that claims a city is lost or calm, ruined or governable, besieged or boring, and that tells the country which frame to believe. Precedent is what remains once the dust settles, and what is cited the next time someone reaches for the same lever in a different city. Portland sits at the meeting point. It has done so before. It knows how this story is written.

The city learned the scale and the cost of federal overreach in 2020. It learned that crowd control by federal teams with uneven training and unclear chains of command can make scenes worse rather than better. It learned that if off-site detentions become common, public patience ends. It learned that if munitions flood blocks that are not on the federal map, courts will impose constraints. It learned that if the Guard is used, it must be used precisely, in support, and for short durations. The state learned that negotiating perimeter control matters. The city learned that prosecutors can make choices that de-escalate rather than escalate. Residents learned the value of legal observers with notebooks and cameras. Journalists learned to resist easy images and to show the rest of the city living normally just two blocks away. Each lesson is a brick in a wall that still stands.

The federal government learned lessons as well. It learned that facility protection statutes provide a route into cities even when governors do not ask for help. It learned that cross-component deployments require preparation that was not present in 2020. It learned that the appearance of soldiers on city streets changes the political equation quickly. It learned that when the public sees a courthouse fence and little else, the case for a large presence erodes fast. It learned that deputizing local officers extends federal charging options, but also draws local backlash and legal scrutiny. Whether those lessons temper decisions now, or whether the desire to set a national example overrides them, is the test of the month ahead.

The stakes extend beyond Portland. If troops or a hardened federal posture can be normalized at the Portland ICE complex, it becomes easier to argue for similar measures along the West Coast. The coast is a string of facilities, each with its own local politics, each with its own movement ecology, and each within a day’s drive of the next. Establish the pattern in one place, and the argument will be that consistency demands it elsewhere. That is why Oregon’s answer matters. It is a signal to other states that the lines of 2020 still exist, that the space for litigation and political constraint remains open, and that the public narrative can resist even dramatic language if the ground is quiet.

The stakes extend beyond Portland. If troops or a hardened federal posture can be normalized at the Portland ICE complex, it becomes easier to argue for similar measures along the West Coast.

It is also why clarity matters in describing what is actually happening on the ground. The record shows a facility that has been a periodic flashpoint for years. It shows a weekend in June with a sharp clash and a riot declaration. It shows city notices about chemical munitions and land use. It shows a September announcement of troops and a state reply that refuses the premise. It does not show a city in flames. If the public conversation cannot hold that distinction, it will not be able to hold the legal lines either. The law lives in facts. The facts here do not support the case for soldiers as a default around an immigration building in a calm city.

None of this is to deny risk. Scenes at flashpoints can change fast. A determined group can create a surge in minutes. A line officer can make a bad decision. A protest can end with a broken window, an injured officer, or a charge that will take months to resolve. That is why training, clarity of command, and disciplined rules of engagement matter more here than in most cities. Portland carries a heavier load of memory. It can absorb less improvisation.

Facility protection cannot become a blank check that swallows a city’s streets. The Guard cannot be treated as a federalized point of leverage against a state that says no.

The work ahead is clearer than the noise suggests. Local leaders should continue to narrow geography and mission. Federal officials should keep soldiers, if they come, within clear property lines. Any push off-site will invite legal action that neither side should want. The city should track arrests with precision and insist on swift disclosures. The state should insist that any Guard activation remain under state command with defined tasks and timelines. Civil society should do what it has done for years in Oregon. Document. Support. Challenge. Repeat. Media coverage should make the quiet as visible as the clash.

What does it mean for a President to describe a city as war ravaged while neighbors sit on patios and children walk to school. It means the narrative is national, and the city is an instrument. What does it mean for a Governor to answer with crime statistics and a flat refusal to conjure a crisis. It means the state chooses the ground of argument. What does it mean for a federal agency to promise full force around an immigration building. It means the agency has a theory of control that is larger than any one building. The city and the state have a different theory. They believe public order is more than a fence line and a flashbang. They believe that democratic control requires precision, restraint, and public consent.

The end of this story has not been written. The beginning, however, is already on the page. Portland is not a prop. Oregon is not a testing ground that cannot answer. The people who live there have developed muscles for moments like this. Their officials have learned when to harden and when to yield. Their institutions know how to force clarity when slogans are thick in the air. If the next weeks bring soldiers to a federal campus on the South Waterfront, they will bring lawyers, observers, and steady local reporting as well. If the next weeks bring a push off site, they will bring injunctions and a political cost that will be felt far from the Willamette.

This is not about one block. It is about the rules that govern many blocks in many cities when national politics decides that a local building must symbolize the country’s will. That decision is never only about the building. It is about who gets to describe a city to itself, and whether that description is allowed to erase what people can see with their own eyes. Portland has seen that attempted erasure before. It is ready to write its own description again.

The crescendo should be clear. Facility protection cannot become a blank check that swallows a city’s streets. The Guard cannot be treated as a federalized point of leverage against a state that says no. Deputization cannot substitute for consent. Rhetoric about domestic terrorists cannot stand in for the facts on the ground. Oregon has the power to hold those lines. Portland has the practice. The country will be watching whether the rule of law, and not the pull of a narrative, decides what happens next.