PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A gas mask dangled from Deidra Watts’s backpack as she joined dozens of others outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, just as she has many nights since July.
The protesters toed a blue line painted across the building’s driveway. “GOVERNMENT PROPERTY DO NOT BLOCK,” read its white, stenciled letters. When they lingered too close, what appeared to be pepper balls rained down on them from officers posted on the building’s roof.
No one was injured Wednesday, and some of the crowd began to dissipate by about midnight.
While disruptive to nearby residents — a charter school relocated this summer to get away from the crowd-control devices — the nightly demonstrations are a far cry from the unrest that gripped the city following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.
They nevertheless have drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who often sparred with the city’s mayor back then.
Last week, Trump described living in Portland as “like living in hell” and said he was considering sending in federal troops, as he has recently threatened to do to combat crime in other cities, including Chicago and Baltimore. He deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer and as part of his law enforcement takeover in Washington, D.C.
Most violent crime around the country has actually declined in recent years, including in Portland, where a recent report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that homicides from January through June decreased by 51% this year compared to the same period in 2024.
“There’s a propaganda campaign to make it look like Portland is a hellscape,” said Casey Leger, 61, who often sits outside the ICE building trying to observe immigration detainee transfers. “Two blocks away you can just go to the river and sit and sip a soda and watch the birds.”
The building is off a busy road leading into Portland from the suburbs, and next to an affordable housing complex. During the day, Leger and a few other advocates mill about and offer copies of “know your rights” flyers featuring a hotline number for reporting ICE arrests.
At night, Watts and other protesters, many dressed in black and wearing helmets or masks, arrive. She called ICE a callous and cruel machine.
“In the face of that, there has to be people who will stand up and make it known that that’s not gonna fly, that that’s not something the people agree with,” Watts said.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The nighttime protests peaked in June after the nationwide “No Kings” marches, when Portland police declared one demonstration a riot. Since then, at least 26 protesters have been charged with federal offenses tied to the ICE building, including assaulting federal officers, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon.
“Like other mayors across the country, I have not asked for – and do not need – federal intervention,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement following Trump’s threat. The city has protected freedom of expression while “addressing occasional violence and property destruction,” he said.
There have been smaller clashes since June. On Labor Day, some demonstrators brought a prop guillotine — a display the Department of Homeland Security blasted as “unhinged behavior.”
Wilson expects protests to stay focused on the area by the building, he said.
Some residents of the adjacent apartments are upset about that. One sued to try to make the city enforce noise ordinances. She said she believed noise from bullhorns, speakers and “piercing whistle-type sounds” akin to air-raid sirens had caused her eardrum to burst, and gas that entered her apartment made her ill. The judge who heard the case sided with the city.
Rick Stype, who has lived there for 10 years, said he accompanies some neighbors outside because they fear being harassed by protesters.
“I just want them to leave us alone,” he said. “I want them to be gone.”
A charter school next to the ICE building, the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science, relocated over the summer, saying that chemical agents and crowd-control projectiles put student safety at risk.
Many parents and students were regular customers at Chris Johnson’s nearby coffee shop, he said. He lamented the school’s move and the national narrative that the protests were a bigger deal than they are.
“I think people are very, very opinionated on either side of it,” he said. “It just creates a divide, which is unfortunate.”
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