Kristi Noem, currently serving as the homeland security secretary, visited the federal immigration enforcement office in the city of Portland on Tuesday. During her visit, she observed a modest protest outside, which contrasts sharply to the fiery "siege" alleged by the former president.
Noem was accompanied by a set of conservative influencers who were driven from the local airport to the facility in her official convoy. Her department has shared more aggressive digital updates depicting federal agents conducting immigration raids and using tear gas at demonstrators.
Officers established a perimeter outside the building in the southern Portland area before the Noem's visit. Several protesters, featuring one in the outfit of a bird and another as a shark, were held back.
Music played loudly from a gathering spot close by, with a refrain referencing the former president and Epstein files. Someone shouted to a official camera operator filming from the roof, questioning whether the homeland security had been renamed the "propaganda department".
Journalists from nonpartisan media organizations were also held behind the barrier outside, while the partisan influencers in Noem’s entourage—three right-wing influencers—shared online posts of the secretary participating in federal officers in a prayer session inside, delivering a pep talk, and advising a soldier of the Oregon National Guard to "Get ready".
Governor Noem has repeated the president’s claims that the handful of individuals—who have assembled in their dozens outside the site since recent months, including one in an inflatable frog costume—are "terrorists" who have placed the office "in a state of siege", making the deployment of federal troops necessary.
Yet, on Saturday, a federal judge in the city blocked the former president's effort to nationalize local militia, stating that the president’s assertions that the largely peaceful city was "being destroyed" were "not based on reality".
Following that, the same judge, the magistrate—who was appointed to the bench by Trump—expanded her order to block state militia from other states from being sent in Oregon. The judge ruled after Trump responded to her first order by trying to send members of the another state's militia to the state.
After the former president drew attention the limited yet ongoing protest outside the ICE facility and made false claims that the city is "in a state of war", a increasing amount of his followers, including conservative personalities, have turned up to face the individuals.
Several of these clashes have led to altercations and fistfights, prompting detentions by the officers. A conservative personality was among those arrested after he sought to enter a protest encampment on a pavement near the ICE facility and was involved in a scuffle over an national banner. He had previously removed the flag from a individual who was setting it on fire.
Criminal counts against him were later dropped after an backlash in partisan press prompted the chief of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, a department official, to threaten an investigation of the law enforcement agency over supposed partisan treatment.
Two individuals he was involved in an altercation with still face charges.
On Sunday, Governor Tina Kotek, the governor, alleged DHS agents in the site of trying to provoke the demonstrators by using excessive quantities of crowd control agents in a local community and inviting right-wing personalities to document the gathering from the top of the facility. "Their actions are meant to provoke," she commented.
A trio of those conservative influencers were described in a police report last month as "counter-protesters" who "constantly return and provoke the demonstrators until they are assaulted or exposed to irritants" and refuse "repeated advice from police to keep clear of" the protesters.
Benny Johnson, a ex-reporter who changed careers as a partisan figure after being dismissed from a media outlet for ethical violations, published footage of the secretary looking down from the roof of the office at the small group of protesters below, including a protest organizer who sports a bird outfit to taunt Trump. The influencer described the video of her inspecting the peaceful setting below: "DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stares down army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit".
Despite the contrast between the allegations from Trump and Noem that this facility is "besieged" from "domestic terrorists" and obvious footage of a small number of individuals in harmless costumes, the personalities with the secretary continued to describe the demonstrators as harmful activists.
During her visit, the secretary also met with the city's top cop, Chief Day, who has been depicted as "woke" in right-wing outlets for authorizing his law enforcement to arrest Nick Sortor. In a social media update on the engagement, Johnson claimed that the chief had "sided with violent ANTIFA militants assaulting journalists and officers outside ICE facility".
The secretary's convoy then left the site past a small group of demonstrators on the street outside, including one wearing a bear wearing a headgear.
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