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portland oregon
Portland Mayor Decries Mounting Bloodshed, Tells ICE to Get Out After Federal Agents Shoot Two
"As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed," said Keith Wilson, the Democratic mayor of Portland, Oregon.
Jan 09, 2026
The mayor of Portland, Oregon told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leave the city after federal agents shot and wounded two people on Thursday, just a day after an ICE agent killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
"We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts," Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement. "Portland is not a 'training ground' for militarized agents, and the 'full force' threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed."
The shooting took place Thursday afternoon during what the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as a "targeted vehicle stop" conducted by Border Patrol agents. Echoing its narrative about the deadly Minneapolis shooting—which was contradicted by video footage from the scene—DHS said the driver "weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents."
But Wilson said Thursday that the Trump administration could not be trusted to provide an accurate account of events or conduct an honest investigation.
"We know what the federal government says happened here," said Wilson. "There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time has long passed."
The man and woman shot by Border Patrol agents were reportedly married, and both were taken to a nearby hospital. Neither their identities nor their conditions were immediately made public.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said late Thursday that his office was investigating the shooting to determine “whether any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority."
"We have been clear about our concerns with the excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland, and today’s incident only heightens the need for transparency and accountability," said Rayfield. "Oregonians deserve clear answers when people are injured in their neighborhoods."
The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were hardly the first time federal immigration officers have used deadly force during US President Donald Trump's lawless mass deportation campaign.
The Marshall Project noted earlier this week that "federal officers have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months."
"Agents have also shot other people," The Marshall Project added. "The Trace, the nonprofit news organization covering gun violence, has counted more than a dozen such shootings. In some cases, the victims survived, including a woman who suffered multiple bullet wounds in an incident in Chicago in October. The Border Patrol officer who shot her appeared to brag about it in a text message, later presented in court evidence. The message reportedly read, 'I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.'"
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Trump Says National Guard to Leave Chicago, LA, and Portland, But 'Will Come Back'
Accusing "a president desperate to be king" of using troops "as political pawns," California's attorney general noted the announcement followed "a stinging rebuke by the Supreme Court."
Dec 31, 2025
After a series of losses in court, President Donald Trump ended 2025 with an announcement that he is pulling the plug on legally contested National Guard deployments in three major US cities—but he also pledged that troops will return in the new year.
Trump initially sent thousands of California National Guard members to Los Angeles in June amid protests against his violent immigration operations. The remaining troops left the city earlier this month in response to a pair of orders from a district judge and the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The president also tried to deploy National Guard members to the streets of two other Democrat-led cities—Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois—but those moves were blocked by lawsuits, including one that produced a US Supreme Court decision last week.
Throughout the president's push to deploy troops to these and other cities, he has circulated lies about crime rates. He did so again in the Wednesday announcement on his Truth Social platform, writing, "We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact."
"Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in," Trump claimed. "We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time! It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made???"
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat expected to run for president in 2028, said on social media Wednesday that it is "about time Donald Trump admitted defeat. We've said it from day one: The federal takeover of California's National Guard is illegal."
Newsom and the state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, challenged the LA deployment. In that case, the US Department of Justice on Tuesday filed a brief with the 9th Circuit withdrawing its motion to keep the California troops under federal control.
"For six months, CA National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a president desperate to be king," Bonta said Wednesday. "Now, in the face of a stinging rebuke by the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is backing away from its effort to federalize and deploy CA National Guard troops."
Although that Supreme Court decision was not directly about California, the justices' rejection of the Trump administration's request to strike down a temporary restraining order that barred the Illinois deployment was expected to inform other cases.
Trump federalized Illinois and Texas national guard troops to patrol in Chicago, but Illinois quickly sued and won a court ruling keeping them out of the city. The troops did training exercises instead. Today, Trump claims that the guard "greatly reduced" crime in Chicago. Did they do it remotely?
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— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) December 31, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another Democrat who may run for the Oval Office in the next cycle, also pointed to the recent ruling in his response to the president on Wednesday: "Donald Trump's lying again. He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down."
"Illinois and Chicago have reduced crime with smart investments in police and community violence reduction programs," he continued. "Meanwhile, Trump cut federal support for both. No matter how many lies he tells, we will keep standing up for truth and against his abuse of power."
Ahead of Trump's announcement, the New Republic's Greg Sargent said that the president and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, "are actually failing in crucial ways. Deportations are lagging behind their goals, courts are mostly functioning, and their fascist, ethnonationalist cruelties have unleashed a countermobilization of unexpected scope and power."
After the new Truth Social post, Sargent added: "Trump just announced that he's pulling the National Guard out of Chicago, LA, and Portland while pretending he won some kind of big victory. Here's the reality: Their authoritarian designs have faced massive civil and popular resistance."
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‘Ring the Alarm Bells’: Merkley Marathon Speech Against Trump Authoritarianism Passes 16-Hour Mark
“This is an extraordinarily dangerous moment," warned the Democratic senator from Oregon.
Oct 22, 2025
Sen. Jeff Merkley on Tuesday night began a marathon speech on the floor of the US Senate, which he said was intended to "ring the alarm bells" against President Donald Trump's authoritarian ambitions.
The speech, which began at approximately 6:30 pm ET on Tuesday and and was still continuing at press time, documented Trump's unprecedented assaults on American institutions and the rule of law.
"I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells," Merkley (D-Ore.) said at the start of his speech. "We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution."
Among other things, Merkley pointed to the Trump administration's attacks on the media, including threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to pull broadcast licenses of stations unless they stopped airing late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who for years has been a staunch Trump critic.
Merkley also noted Trump's attempts to send the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, based on completely false claims that the city is "burning down" due to rioting from Antifa operatives. He ridiculed the notion that the current protests outside of the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility constituted an organized rebellion with an intent to overthrow the US government.
"So among the inflated costumes, and the women in doing their pajamas and pastries... and the Unipiper on the unicycle, where do you find a large, organized, armed group with a mission of overthrowing the government?" he asked rhetorically. "Not to be found!"
Merkley highlighted the threat posed by National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump last month that mandates a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence," with an exclusive focus on left-wing groups.
Merkley argued that the order was a thinly veiled effort to shut down political dissent in the US by labeling all opposition to the president as a form of "political violence."
"It certainly appears like it's a strategy to take folks you disagree with and label them a terrorist threat, when they may actually be no such threat at all," he said.
Elsewhere in the speech, Merkley slammed Trump for using the US Department of Justice as an instrument of revenge to go after his political opponents, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, all of whom have been indicted on criminal charges over the last month.
“This is an extraordinarily dangerous moment,” he said. “An authoritarian president proceeding to attack free speech, attack free press, weaponize the Department of Justice, and use it against those who disagree with him, and then seeking the court’s permission to send the military into our cities to attack people who are peacefully protesting."
At press time, Merkley has been speaking for more than 16 consecutive hours. Earlier this year, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) held the Senate floor for a record 25 hours in a speech that similarly warned about Trump's authoritarian takeover of the US government.
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