🔗 Share this article

Kristi Noem, acting as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, conducted a tour the ICE facility in the city of Portland on this week. During her visit, she observed a limited demonstration outside, which differs significantly to the fiery "siege" described by former President Donald Trump.

Accompanied by Right-Wing Media Figures

Governor Noem was joined by a group of conservative influencers who were driven from the Portland airport to the site in her official convoy. The Department of Homeland Security has published increasingly belligerent social media content depicting federal personnel carrying out raids and using crowd control measures at demonstrators.

Demonstration Details

Officers secured the area outside the ICE office in the southern Portland area before the secretary’s arrival. A handful protesters, including one in the outfit of a fowl and another as a baby shark, were kept at a distance.

A song was audible from a gathering spot nearby, with lyrics mentioning the former president and Epstein files. A demonstrator yelled to a federal recorder recording from the facility's roof, questioning whether the DHS had been renamed the "propaganda department".

Reporting Details

Reporters from independent publications were also kept at the security perimeter outside, while the partisan influencers in Noem’s entourage—Benny Johnson, Nick Sortor, and David Media—posted online posts of the governor leading federal agents in a prayer session inside, delivering a encouraging words, and advising a individual of the militia to "Prepare".

Recent Rulings

Governor Noem has previously echoed the Trump's claims that the group of individuals—who have rallied in their small numbers outside the site since recent months, including one in an frog outfit—are "terrorists" who have placed the office "in a state of siege", making the use of government forces necessary.

Yet, on Saturday, a federal judge in the city halted Trump’s effort to federalize the state's guard, determining that the president’s assertions that the generally nonviolent city was "in flames" were "untethered to the facts".

A day later, the judge, Karin Immergut—who was appointed to the bench by the former president—expanded her order to prevent guard members from other states from being deployed in the city. She acted after Trump reacted to her initial ruling by trying to send members of the California National Guard to Oregon.

Escalating Tensions

After the former president highlighted the small but persistent gathering outside the site and made false claims that the city is "war ravaged", a growing number of his adherents, including right-wing figures, have arrived to face the protesters.

Some of these confrontations have resulted in scuffles and fistfights, prompting arrests by the local law enforcement. Nick Sortor was among those arrested after he tried to force his way a demonstration site on a sidewalk near the site and was part of an altercation over an American flag. Sortor had earlier seized the banner from a protester who was burning it.

Criminal counts against him were eventually dismissed after an protest in partisan press prompted the head of the rights office of the DOJ, a department official, to threaten an investigation of the Portland Police Bureau over alleged anti-conservative bias.

Two individuals Sortor was involved in an altercation with still face charges.

Government Statements

Recently, Oregon’s governor, the governor, alleged federal officers in the office of trying to provoke the protesters by using unnecessary levels of chemical irritants in a local community and inviting right-wing personalities to record the crowd from the roof of the site. "They are deliberately inciting," the governor stated.

Three of those right-wing personalities were referred to in a official record last month as "opposing demonstrators" who "constantly return and provoke the protesters until they are confronted or exposed to irritants" and decline "ongoing instructions from police to stay away from" the demonstrators.

Influencer Activities

Benny Johnson, a previous media worker who transitioned as a right-wing commentator after being let go from BuzzFeed for content theft, posted video of Governor Noem viewing from the upper level of the site at the small group of individuals below, including an individual who dons a bird outfit to taunt Trump. The influencer captioned the clip of Noem observing the calm environment below: "Secretary Noem confronts Antifa militants and a costumed protester".

In spite of the disconnect between the allegations from Trump and Noem that this ICE field office is "encircled" from "domestic terrorists" and clear visual evidence of a small number of demonstrators in harmless costumes, the personalities with the secretary continued to describe the protesters as harmful activists.

Discussion with Law Enforcement

During her visit, the secretary also met with the Portland police chief, Bob Day, who has been depicted as "politically correct" in right-wing outlets for allowing his officers to arrest Sortor. In a online post on the engagement, Benny Johnson asserted that the official had "supported violent ANTIFA militants attacking journalists and officers outside ICE facility".

Noem’s motorcade then exited the office past a handful of protesters on the exterior, including one dressed as a bear wearing a sombrero.