Donald Trump’s plan to send the National Guard ‘to protect war-ravaged Portland’ has been met with bewilderment from many people who live there.

Portland

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to Portland, Oregon, as a 'war zone' and has announced the deployment of National Guard troops to the city, citing ongoing unrest. However, local residents and court documents suggest that recent protests have been limited in size and largely confined to the area around the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, with no widespread violence reported in downtown Portland.

Officials from the city and state have filed lawsuits against the federal deployment, calling it unnecessary and unlawful. Experts point to Portland's reputation as a progressive city and its history of protest movements as reasons for the political focus, while also noting that the situation in the city has calmed significantly since the large-scale protests of 2020.

Why does Trump keep calling Portland a war zone?

So why is Trump so focused on Portland? Portland is unbelievable, what's going on. Portland burning to the ground. Portland, Oregon, it looks like a war zone. US President Trump has said he's directing the National Guard to the city, calling it war ravage. But that's not what people in Portland are saying. It's just been declared the headquarters of domestic terrorism in the United States. Constant battles going on behind me. It's just an absolute total war zone. But is Portland a war ravaged place? I don't think so. Nate Hellman shot this TikTok video of downtown Portland recently. I needed to see with my own eyes. I went to Pioneer Courthouse Square, went down there at that time and checked that out. And it was just very quiet, very calm. So where's this conflict Trump's talking about? Well, for several months, there have been a small and persistent group of demonstrators camped out around the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office or ICE facility. It's about two miles from downtown Portland. Now, while there has been some arrests made since June, these incidents have been contained in this area. And according to court documents, protests have been small in size. This is about as extreme as those demonstrations have got. The largest protests of just over 100 people was at the beginning of September. But on Tuesday, Trump made the claim again that Portland looks like a war zone, followed by explaining he had seen it on television. Well, unless they're playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Well, we don't know exactly what Trump saw. Fox News did edit this 2025 protest footage with footage from the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Those were largely peaceful protests, but certain demonstrations involved vandalism, arson and property damage. Trump then said on Wednesday that he had called in the National Guard troops to respond to the protests outside the immigration office. But Russell Gibson, a national commander, said that while 200 troops have been called up, it would need another four to seven days before being deployed next week. Now, both the state and the city government have filed a lawsuit against Trump calling the president's move unlawful and baseless. The lawsuit mentioned Portland's police bureau has more than enough officers to respond to the small, ongoing ICE facility protests. So with all this evidence of relative peace in Portland, why is Trump targeting it? They target Portland in order to kind of hinder liberal progressive politics on a state level and on a national level. Alexander Ross is a professor at Portland State University. He's observed many previous protests and says it's the city's politics that have made it a target. And Ross says that call goes back to Portland's history. Portland was very much branded during the early 2010s as a sort of liberal utopia. A progressive place with coffee and beer. It was like an ambassador of the new progressivism under Obama. You had a sort of growth of protest movements here, then counter protests by the right against the character of the city, or at least its branding. Ross says that made the city a hotspot for right-wing protests during Trump's first term in office. The thing that they were really attacking was the city of Portland, which is why thousands and thousands of people would show up to counter protest them. They weren't all like, you know, black-clad anarchists. They were just normal people who wanted to be left alone. Then everyone remembers 2020 when a convergence of protests lasting almost 200 days came to a head in the city. Trump sentenced 700 officers as a response, which led to further escalation. There was the COVID-19 pandemic, there was terrible wildfires here, and there were major protests downtown. And so those three things sort of collided to make the city very, very tense. Ever since, things calmed down here significantly. And despite things calming down, the Trump administration still lists some of those previous protests as reasons for sending in the National Guard. And most recently, the Trump administration says it's rebranding its Department of Defense, calling it Department of War, with a focus on domestic threats. We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but military. Ross says military involvement in other cities like Washington and Los Angeles this year, along with the target on Portland, could be signs of a deliberate strategy. He's sending in military forces in a way that could be escalated over time. Trump's record of just persistent escalation, I think that's kind of what we're looking at for 2026.

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