White House views Portland protests as opening to pursue Trump’s crime crackdown

By Alayna Treene, CNN

(CNN) — When President Donald Trump announced he was sending troops to “protect war-ravaged” Portland, his administration cited the need to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities from persistent demonstrations.

But behind the scenes, White House officials say, Trump also had another goal in mind: he wanted to use the military to advance his federal crime crackdown, and he saw protecting ICE facilities as a good pretext.

“You can kill two birds with one stone,” a person familiar with the talks said.

That strategy is notable given the president shelved his plans to target crime in Chicago last month, at least for the time being, after advisers warned him that sending in troops to help with local law enforcement without buy-in from the state’s Democratic governor could create legal headaches that they want to avoid, CNN previously reported.

However, Portland, another blue city in a blue state, is different, Trump administration officials said, from a legal and political standpoint.

They argue the months-long protests outside the city’s ICE building – which they’ve framed as “violent riots” tied to “Antifa domestic terrorists” — justify the president’s latest deployment of troops to a major American city. That insistence comes despite Oregon’s state and local leaders suing the administration for alleged unlawful overreach in federalizing the Oregon National Guard to respond to unrest — legal pushback that Illinois’ leaders have also threatened.

Trump said Wednesday the National Guard “is now in place” and invoked “antifa and radical left anarchists” who he claimed are “viciously attacking our Federal Law Enforcement Officers.” (The White House has continually pointed to Portland – home to one of the oldest coalitions in the United States to carry the Antifa moniker – as it has sought to target left-wing groups.)

“We’re only going in because, as American Patriots, we have no choice,” Trump added in a subsequent Truth Social post on Wednesday, the day after suggesting at a military event in Quantico, Virginia, that US cities could be used as a “training ground” for the nation’s military.

The list of places he’s sending or has plans to send troops already includes Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago and Memphis. Though Trump has so far abstained from using troops in Chicago to target crime (they’ve so far sent federal agents to ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrations), that could change, as protesters clashed with law enforcement at an ICE facility in a suburb about 10 miles to its west over the weekend.

“We don’t need an excuse to go into any city. The president has the legal authority to do it,” one White House official said of Portland. “But if he did need one, these dangerous riots are a prime example.”

A second official put it this way: “The president has seen success in places like Los Angeles to quell these types of riots.”

The White House has argued Trump’s strategy is two-fold: protecting law enforcement and cracking down on crime. “President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to CNN Wednesday.

Officials added that the administration is also closely watching how residents of Portland respond to the forces on the ground, noting that if protests tied to their presence get out of hand, the president reserves the right to increase the number of troops in the city.

Local leaders have anticipated that — arguing the administration is trying to create the image of chaos they purport to want to quell.

“The president has sent agents here to create chaos and riots here in Portland, to induce a reaction. To induce protests. To induce conflicts. His goal is to make Portland look as he was describing it as,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a news conference after Trump’s late September announcement. “Our job is to say, ‘We are not going to take the bait.’”

And the lawsuit from Oregon and Portland leaders argued that the White House is pointing to protests from as far back as 2020 to justify the National Guard activation, which they say also risks stoking new unrest.

“Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry,” their court filing alleges. “Defendants’ deployment of troops to Oregon is patently unlawful.”

The guard members tasked with assisting federal agents in Portland are now training for the mission, but another complicating factor to Trump’s move is that they won’t be paid until the federal government reopens.

Most of the protests outside the ICE facility in question – about 2 miles south of downtown Portland – have been peaceful, but occasionally have ended in the deployment of tear gas and resulted in the facility being closed for several days in the summer, as CNN has reported. As of last month, federal prosecutors had charged 27 people for activity outside the facility, according to a spokesperson for the US Attorney for the District of Oregon, with most charges for assaulting a federal law enforcement officer or failing to obey a lawful order.

But as the city awaits a federal judge’s decision on whether to block the guard deployment – and continues to emphasize their “sanctuary city” status – Portland officials remain at odds with Trump over whether the federal presence is necessary.

“President Trump has directed ‘all necessary Troops’ to Portland, Oregon,” Mayor Keith Wilson said Saturday. “The number of necessary troops is zero.”

White House officials continue to argue they prefer to send the military to cities where their leaders want the administration’s help — such as in Memphis, where the state’s GOP governor has publicly welcomed the intervention and is working in close coordinating with the president’s team.

However, the White House also views the president’s move to target crime in Washington, DC, Memphis and now Portland as one that will play well politically in the 2026 midterms.

As one official put it: “This was a campaign promise.”

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