Trump says he will send troops to Portland, Oregon: NPR

Portland, Oregon – President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing full force, if necessary” to manage “national terrorists” while he widens his controversial deployments in more American cities.

He made this announcement on social networks, writing that he ordered the Ministry of Defense to “provide all the troops necessary to protect the Ravae Portland war”. Trump said the decision was necessary to protect American immigration and customs application, which he described as “besieged against antifa attack, and other domestic terrorists”.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for details on Trump’s announcement, such as a calendar for deployment or on which troops would be involved.

During a press conference on Friday evening, the American senator Jeff Merkley warned the public that Trump would try to create chaos. “Do not take bait,” he said.

“Our responsibility is, yes, to express our opinions. Yes, the protest,” said Merkley. “But better done at a distance from these federal troops, wherever they are and whatever they do, because their objective is to create a commitment, a commitment that will lead to a conflict.”

Trump had previously threatened to send the national guard to Chicago but has not yet followed. A deployment in Memphis, in Tennessee, is expected soon and will only include 150 soldiers, much less than those who were sent to the District of Columbia for the repression of Trump against crime or in Los Angeles in response to immigration demonstrations which have become violent with the arrival of troops. Trump also sent navies to Los Angeles.

Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for information. The office of the Governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, a democrat.

The mayor of Portland, Keith Wilson, said on Friday evening that the city already saw a sudden increase in federal agents, describing armored vehicles and agents arriving in the street.

“We didn’t ask them to come,” said the Democrat mayor. “They are unprecedented here or clear objective.”

Portland, resident of 636,000 inhabitants, was the site for protesting long -term racial justice and sometimes violent following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.

Recent events have been much more silent and focused on the area around the ice building, located outside the city center of the city, in the heart of the 2020 events. The main entrance to the building and the windows on the ground floor were embarked and tagged with graffiti.

Some federal agents were injured and several demonstrators were accused of assault. Some demonstrators also say they were injured. When the demonstrators erected a guillotine earlier this month, the Ministry of Internal Security described it as a “disarticulated behavior”.

Meanwhile, municipal groups and officials have sought to highlight the recovery of the city center since 2020.

This summer would have been the most frequented for pedestrian traffic since the coronavirus pandemic, and the overall violent crime in Portland from January to June decreased by 17% this year compared to the same period in 2024, a recent report by Major Cities Chiefs Association. The city center experienced a decrease in homeless tent camps which defined the years immediately after the pandemic.

Since the assassination of September 10 of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Trump has intensified his efforts to face what he calls the “radical left”, which he blame for the problems of the country with political violence.

Trump, in the comments Thursday at the Oval Office, suggested that a kind of operation was in preparation.

“We are going to get out and we are going to do a large number of these people from Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists”.