The New Yorker:

The Trump Administration, looking for another TV-ready fight in Oregon, is ready to sic the National Guard on the city’s inflatable-costumed protesters.

By James Ross Gardner

In early October, Keith Wilson, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, visited 4310 South Macadam Avenue, an address that has thrust his city back into the national spotlight—and into the crosshairs of President Donald Trump. Since June, this site, the local headquarters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), had been the focus of daily protests, with activists rallying against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, often clashing with maga counter-protesters. Although the demonstrations were colorful—a carnivalesque atmosphere, with people wearing inflatable frog suits and other costumes—the ice facility itself, a former data-processing center for a regional bank, with boarded-up windows, was about as incognito as the masked, armed federal officers who guarded it from the rooftop.

To the public, what was going on inside the building largely remained a mystery. No media, beyond Trump-friendly right-wing influencers, had been allowed in. But Wilson was “summoned” to the building, in his words, to meet with Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who came to town after Trump announced, on Truth Social, that he was authorizing “all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.” Wilson hoped to persuade Noem that there was no need for federal intervention—that the city had its protests under control. But, after visiting the building, he reached the conclusion that ice itself lacked any discipline or control. “It’s dishevelled,” he told me, of the conditions inside. “It’s unkempt. It’s disorganized.”

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