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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that her agency would “double down” in Portland after state and local leaders rebuffed a series of demands she made during a visit to the city this week.
During a televised Trump administration cabinet meeting, Noem said she would seek to purchase additional facilities in Portland and boost the number of federal officers in the city. She also blasted Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson as well as Oregon and Portland law enforcement leaders.
“They are all lying and disingenuous and dishonest people because as soon as you leave the room they make the exact opposite response,” Noem said. “I told them that if they didn’t meet our demands for safety and security on the streets and work with us we were going to bring in more federal law enforcement.”
The remarks came two days after Noem made an appearance Tuesday at South Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, the site of nightly protests since June.
Those protests had often involved no more than several dozen people in the weeks before President Donald Trump announced plans last month deploy troops to Portland, claiming the ICE building and the federal officers who work inside it were under siege.
During meetings she held with Kotek, Wilson, Oregon State Superintendent Casey Codding and Portland Police Chief Bob Day, Noem made multiple demands. Among them: more security at the ICE building as well as a permanent perimeter around it that would move protesters further away from the facility into surrounding neighborhoods.
In a letter to federal officials Wednesday, Wilson rejected or sidestepped those and other requests. Hours later, he ordered several blocks that the city had closed near the ICE building during Noem’s visit to reopen.
On Thursday, Wilson spokesperson Cody Bowman confirmed that Noem had indicated she would escalate homeland security’s response in Portland during her meeting with the mayor, though the city received no indication that the federal government would seek to purchase additional property.
“Mayor Wilson urges federal partners to engage constructively and to refrain from rhetoric that misrepresents our city’s leadership and values,” Bowman said.
In a statement, Kotek said she supported Wilson’s decision “to hold the line in response to the Trump administration’s lies and aggressive tactics.”
“It is clear from Secretary Noem’s continued false narrative about what’s happening in Portland that the Trump administration has no interest in the facts, no interest in public safety, and that we cannot take them at their word,” Kotek said. “I am calling on President Trump and his administration to focus on real problems, not made up ones.”
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