Chandler Patey isn’t surprised that his apartment has been featured on national television, even though it isn’t really much to look at.
Patey, 29, has been regularly protesting outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland since May, when he began offering up his apartment to fellow protesters to use the bathroom. By June, when protests erupted, protesters were also using his apartment to wash off pepper spray, recharge and store supplies.
Now Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham has referred to the apartment, about one block away from the facility, as an “antifa safehouse” after conservative online journalist and influencer Nick Sortor filmed inside it.
“Do we know whose place that is, like, who pays the rent there?” Ingraham asked.
“It’s sort of a mystery. We know that you have, like, the antifa ringleaders that all come together there,” Sortor said. “We’re going to be identifying these people, and all of this information will be turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.”
In the Fox News segment, posted to the social-media site X on Wednesday, viewers watched from Sortor’s point of view as he approaches an open door and points the camera into the apartment. An occupant sees him and rushes to close the door. In another portion of the video, Sortor films through the glass door and is noticed by several people inside, who stand up to confront him, then insult him, including with a homophobic slur.
Patey is one of the people in the video whose face isn’t concealed. Another is Seth Todd, the demonstrator who started the frog costume phenomenon at ICE protests, and has been criticized for past online comments urging violence against Trump’s “cronies.”
The segment on Ingraham’s show wasn’t the first time Patey’s apartment made national news.
Earlier this month, online conservative journalist Katie Daviscourt alleged in a roundtable with President Donald Trump that aired on Fox News that protesters had used a Portland “antifa safehouse” to hide a woman suspected of hitting her in the face with a flagpole.
“This safehouse is where antifa-affiliated protesters are conducting paramilitary operations,” Daviscourt said Oct. 8. “It’s where they are resting, they’re showering, they’re eating to continue this occupation.”
Speaking to The Oregonian/OregonLive inside his apartment Thursday, Patey agreed with the conservative journalists’ statements — in part.
“Ironically, it’s technically not wrong to say that this is an anti-fascist safehouse, because if you’re an anti-fascist, then you’re allowed in,” Patey said. “If you need to use the restroom, that’s totally cool, man. Just don’t make a mess of things.”
But he scoffs at the argument put forward by Daviscourt, Sortor and others on the political right that he and his fellow Portland protesters are “conducting paramilitary operations” or are part of an organized terrorist enterprise, as antifa has been labeled by Trump.
“That’s insane,” Patey said.
He added — as many others have stated since the word “antifa” came into wide usage during the nationwide protests in 2020 — that a singular, cohesive or centralized antifa organization doesn’t exist and never has. It’s simply a word that describes people who “just don’t like fascism,” he said.
Patey and his fellow protesters do have several goals. The first is, by constantly protesting, to force the government to expend officers’ time. The second is to “show that we are not OK with what is happening” in the country, specifically with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. And the third goal is to help make protesting a normal, perhaps even popular, activity.
“We can’t do much, but we have to do something,” Patey said.
Federal officers have detained him three times, he said. He has been cited twice — once for allegedly failing to follow federal officers’ instructions and once for allegedly “creating a loud or unusual noise,” federal court records show. A video he shared with the newsroom shows him standing on the ICE facility’s driveway before federal agents detain him.
Patey’s small, one-bedroom apartment is sparse, with several bookshelves with mostly fiction books in the living room, a desk, and a pile of protest gear: gas masks, helmets, umbrellas and a megaphone, as well as a plastic tub of medical supplies such as bandages, saline nose spray and nitrile gloves. Next to his bedroom door hums an air filter he bought to clean the air of the tear gas that seeps inside.
Rent costs about $1,600 a month, Patey said. He was paying for it out of his savings up until that money ran out several months ago because he was unemployed. Since then, he has relied on loans from friends and a GoFundMe fundraiser he set up in July, he said. He has recently found work again as a carpenter.
Neither the Portland Police Bureau nor the U.S. Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to questions about how or whether the apartment has affected their protest response. Daviscourt and Sortor likewise did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Patey grew up in Wilsonville, the youngest of four siblings. He developed anti-capitalist views in high school but confined his political activity to entering arguments online. After a stint at Portland State University, he joined the Marine Corps but was discharged because of health issues, he said. Over time, immersed himself deeper in leftist politics and protest organizing.
In 2023, he was looking for a place to live when he found the apartment, on South Lowell Street. It was relatively inexpensive and it came with what Patey saw as a bonus — it was near the ICE building on South Macadam Avenue. Patey had participated in the 2020 protests, and he anticipated that subsequent protests would center around the facility.
He was right.
He started helping the protest group 50501 in January, he said, and he participated in the organization of multiple protests this year, including in June, the month demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies erupted nationally and in Portland.
When the demonstrations began at the Portland ICE facility, he immediately opened his apartment up to protesters. First, people came just to use the bathroom, then they started to keep some of their things there.
He has continued to offer his apartment to protesters since then. Now, the most important thing his apartment offers, Patey said, is running water — critical for people who need to wash pepper spray off of their faces and out of their eyes.
On one occasion, a protester sought by federal police ran to his apartment, Patey said. She made it inside, but the officers insisted he open the door while he repeatedly asked to see a warrant. Patey said a federal officer pointed a gun at him, and he opened the door, and the officers came in and took the protester away.
The protester who Daviscourt alleged hit her with a pole Sept. 30 did not go into his apartment after that incident, Patey said. Daviscourt’s footage shows demonstrators crowding around Patey’s door after the alleged assault, preventing Daviscourt from coming closer. Patey said protesters had gathered as a diversion to allow that person to get away.
He said he has not knowingly allowed people into his apartment who have committed crimes. It would be unwise for people evading law enforcement to seek refuge in his apartment, he said, because they would be cornered.
Whenever the city plans to sweep the protesters’ camp in the street, he allows protesters to store medical supplies in his apartment. Otherwise, the largest organizational hurdle discussed at the residence, he said, is how to keep donated supplies accessible and uncluttered and how to give people appropriate first aid.
“There’s just not very much that we can organize, because there’s not much to do,” Patey said. “It isn’t a complicated enough protest.”
Asked if he is paid to protest, Patey said, “I wish.”
Despite landing in the Fox News spotlight, and the possibility of blowback that comes along with that attention, Patey plans on continuing doing what he’s doing: opening his apartment to protesters who need to go to the bathroom, who need a half hour outside the confines of their inflatable costumes, who want to sit down and drink some water.
Todd, the protester in the frog suit, acknowledged using the apartment.
“(Patey) just lets a few of us use his restroom every now and then,” Todd said. “Which isn’t that big of a deal.”
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