Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has warned the mayor of Portland that she will quadruple the number of federal officers in the city if he does not meet her demands.
The 53-year-old made the revelation on Jesse Watters Live on Tuesday, claiming she was disappointed with Mayor Keith Wilson’s response to her requests.
Speaking from Portland, where she made a high-profile visit to a local ICE facility earlier on Tuesday, Noem said she had requested additional security for the facility, among other demands, during a meeting on Tuesday.
Noem singled out Wilson, who she claimed did not go along with her request.
“He did not commit to any of those promises and said he would give me an answer by tomorrow, and I’m hopeful that he will,” she said.
“What I told him that if he did not follow through on some of these security measures for our officers, we were going to cover him up with more federal resources and that we were going to send four times the amount of federal officers here.”
“I’m so extremely disappointed. He’s continuing to play politics,“ Noem added.
“Listen, this mayor is going to wait until somebody gets violently hurt or killed,” she said. “He’s going to have blood on his hands because he sat around and thought too long, because he was too scared of the political ramifications of making a big decision to keep his city safe. Antifa-affiliated individuals are outside this building right now shouting death to my law enforcement officers while the mayor drives home and probably has a fancy dinner tonight and goes to sleep in his cushy bed. It’s just not acceptable.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Noem and Wilson for comment.
Wilson was more measured in a statement released after his meeting with Noem.
He did not reference her ultimatum over increased security for her officers, but stated that tactics used by federal agents are “troubling and likely unconstitutional.”
“In terms of recent rhetoric, we still do not know what ‘Full Force’ against Portland means, or how the administration plans to use our city as a military ‘training ground,’” Wilson said. “Because of these deeply concerning situational unknowns, I intend to explore options to protect our community and our right to free expression.”
“In the meantime, I will continue to demand that Federal officers operating in our city adhere to the same high standards we require of the Portland Police Bureau,” he added.
In a news conference after his meeting with Noem, Portland Police Chief Bob Day called for a “holistic approach” to dealing with protestors outside the ICE facility in South Portland.
“There’s clearly differences of opinion,” he said of his meeting with Noem. “I wouldn’t say that we’re all in alignment on every point, but I can say that, you know, we continue to be professionals, and we continue to strive for a shared value of safety.”
Noem’s arrival in Portland, accompanied by conservative influencers including Benny Johnson and Nick Sorter, follows a federal judge’s decision to block Donald Trump’s attempt to federalize Oregon’s National Guard.
The judge, Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Trump, said the president’s statement that Portland was “burning to the ground” was “unthererted to the facts.”
Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, also accused ICE officers of inflicting heavy amounts of tear gas on protestors. “Portland is not a war zone,” Kotek said on Monday.
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