The deployment in Portland – the largest city in Oregon – would follow similar moves by the Republican President to mobilise troops against the wishes of local Democratic leadership in Los Angeles and the capital, Washington DC.
Anger over the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants has led to months of protests at an Ice facility in Portland.
The city was also the scene of major clashes during Trump’s first term, at the height of racial justice protests after the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
Protests have occurred at other Ice facilities around the country as Trump’s mass deportation drive has rounded up thousands of migrants, often by masked agents.
The hardline approach has sparked conflict with so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions like Portland, which have policies of not coordinating with federal immigration authorities.
Locals fight deployments
Trump first deployed troops in Los Angeles in June, overriding the state’s Democratic governor and prompting an ongoing legal dispute over the limits of presidential authority.
Trump’s Portland announcement comes days after a deadly shooting at an ICE facility in Texas, in which one detainee was killed and two severely injured.
Federal officials say the gunman, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot, had sought to target Ice agents from a nearby rooftop.
The shooting happened weeks after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university campus.
After Kirk’s assassination, Trump announced that he was labelling the diffuse left-wing “Antifa” movement as a “domestic terrorist group”. The designation has led to worries among Trump’s critics that it could be used to broadly suppress dissent in the name of national security.
“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller, wrote Friday evening on social media.
“All necessary resources will be utilised,” he added.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday evening that the Justice Department would deploy agents to Ice facilities across the country. The Joint Terrorism Task Forces will investigate “domestic terrorism”, and seek the “most serious available charges against all participants in these criminal mobs”, she wrote on social media.
“I have witnessed the continued onslaught of violence perpetrated against Ice officers across our country.
– With AFP