The chaotic riots that consumed Portland, Ore., during the summer of 2020 reverberated through a trial over President Trump’s efforts to send National Guard troops into the city’s streets.
Federal officials and government lawyers have portrayed Portland as under siege in seeking to persuade a judge that Trump’s takeover of the state’s soldiers and plans to deploy them are lawful and necessary to protect federal immigration facilities.
But local police officers testified that, already, the presence of federal officers has inflamed tensions with demonstrators.
Protests have been mostly peaceful, they said, and improved local policing tactics have helped keep it that way — unlike during the months-long protests five years ago, which some of them helped quell.
“It was just an entirely different type of disorder,” Portland Police Bureau Cmdr. Franz Schoening said.
Trump called up Oregon’s National Guard in September, vowing to protect “war-ravaged” Portland and its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities.
The move prompted a swift lawsuit from state and city officials seeking to block the president’s efforts. They argue that Trump should not be allowed to put military boots on U.S. soil to remedy a situation stoked by federal agents.
The president initially federalized and moved to deploy 200 Oregon National Guard members, but after U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut temporarily blocked the effort, he sought to send in troops from California and Texas, causing the judge to bar the deployment of any troops. The administration has appealed.
Though the case has little to do with the 2020 protests, spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, it took an unexpected focus as Immergut heard evidence about the city’s protest scene and whether National Guard interference is warranted.
“I want to understand the time period that’s at issue in this case, and perhaps, as compared to 2020,” the judge said. “So, if you could frame it as two things, time frames, that are pertinent to what I need to decide.”
In 2020, what began as peaceful demonstrations against police violence turned into nearly 200 days of sustained protest, devolving into riots as Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with law enforcement and counterprotesters. Images showed cars, dumpsters and police barriers ablaze and streets fogged by tear gas.
Schoening, who was the public order unit team commander throughout the unrest, recalled significant criminal conduct, particularly arson and the “prolific” use of commercial fireworks. He said the protests outside Portland’s ICE facility in recent months pale in comparison.
“The level of violence, criminal conduct, we saw in 2020 was markedly different,” he said.
Portland Police Bureau Assistant Chief Craig Dobson testified that law enforcement saw a “fair amount of illegal behavior” at the ICE facility in June, which he said lasted about a week before petering out.
Local police declared a June 14 demonstration a riot but have not done so since.
Portland Police Bureau Cmdr. Brian Hughes called 2020 “much more widespread” and “large scale” than the ICE facility protests, describing them as incomparable.
In the years since, the Portland Police Bureau has overhauled its policing, the officers said.
Hughes said the bureau has worked to build “more trust” and “legitimacy” among organizers, and since 2020, has seen demonstrations with “tens of thousands of people” lawfully protesting yield few to no arrests.
The bureau also changed how it trains to avoid indiscriminate use of force or aimlessly targeting an unruly crowd to attempt to “bring things into control,” said Dobson, who was the overall incident commander amid the 2020 protests.
They’ve received “hundreds of emails” thanking them for their new approach.
“Are you saying that police activity can inflame a crowd?” asked Caroline Turco, a lawyer for Portland.
“Yes,” Dobson replied.
“Did it in 2020?” Turco followed up. Dobson answered affirmatively again.
Five years ago, Trump sent federal officers into Portland amid the riots to curb nightly protests at the federal courthouse, where the trial is now underway. But instead of stamping out the riots, the level of conflict “grew significantly” between community members and local police following the surge of federal law enforcement, according to an independent firm hired to assess the city’s response to the 2020 demonstrations.
Dobson said he shares the report’s assessment and expressed “concerns” about the National Guard being deployed to Portland.
“My concern again is, what is their training?” Dobson said. “Crowd management is complex and depending on how you show up and what you do, can affect negatively the crowd.”
Schoening described two incidents last month that raised alarm of a repeat on the horizon.
He said protest groups from whom police had previously gotten “good compliance” refused to abide by their request to let traffic move through on Oct. 4 after federal officers used tear gas earlier in the day.
On Oct. 18, federal officers aimed tear gas at protesters in the ICE facility’s driveway but missed, bouncing the canister onto the roof of the building. Other federal officers posted there retaliated by shooting peppers balls and tear gas into the crowd; police and protesters alike were hit, Schoening said.
Brian Marshall, a senior assistant attorney general in the Oregon Department of Justice, noted that the crowd’s unrest, even if spurred by federal officers, is one of the factors the administration has used to justify sending in the troops.
“And I think that there’s a serious legal question, whether that inappropriate use of force that then generates a crowd response — whether that response can then be considered a good faith basis for the deployment of the National Guard,” he said.
The federal officials who testified in the government’s case took different lessons from the 2020 protests.
Maj. Gen. Timothy Rieger, acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, testified that when the National Guard was sent to Los Angeles amid the 2020 protests, the impact was “immediate.”
Fires, pillaging, plundering — “when we showed up, that stopped,” he said. The result was that people lawfully gathered to protest were able to engage in their constitutional right to object and demonstrate, Rieger continued.
Lawyers for the state and city officials pushed back that, when the National Guard was sent to Oregon in 2020, they were under the governor’s control — not Trump’s — and they questioned the relevancy of his testimony about the California city.
Rieger doubled down that he’s “never seen” the National Guard aggravate or inflame a situation.
Two Federal Protective Service supervisors, who testified anonymously, also asserted that the National Guard would alleviate strains. Though they had no role in Trump’s decision to call up the troops, they said help sought from local police went unanswered.
One of the officers, called “Commander,” said he has witnessed peaceful protests at the ICE facility, and that’s not what worries him. Instead, it’s that the facility is not staffed with “adequate numbers” to prevent a possible breach, even as people have roamed the property looking for ways into the building.
When federal officers themselves attempt to enter, they risk being harmed, he said.
“It’s been pretty constant out there that we deserve to die,” the official said.
Turco, the lawyer for Portland, argued Wednesday that a “manufactured crisis” underpinned Trump’s efforts to send in the National Guard, contending the protests have not been so violent that deployment is justified.
But the Justice Department contends that, at the end of the day, the status of the protests matters not. Trump’s decisionmaking is owed great deference, and Immergut, the judge, must only determine whether the president’s bid reflects an “honest judgment” made after fairly assessing the law and facts before him.
