Before Los Angeles was Portland, Oregon.
Over 170 days in 2020, thousands of Portlanders gathered to protest police violence. They lay peacefully in the middle of the city’s most iconic bridge, marching with local NBA stars, but also tore statues and looted shops. Police launched tear gas cans into the crowd, but President Donald Trump, a 750 Homeland Security agent, grabbed protesters at night and loaded them into unmarked vehicles without the approval of local or state officials.
As anti-Trump protests increase – Portland officials are keen to avoid the 2020 repetition as massive rallies take place across the country on Saturday.
“The Portland Police and then the federal government overreacts as they do. It was such a rigged, so I think it brought out more people,” said Ali King, who worked for Rep. Earl Brumenauer (D-ore.), a veteran social organizer in Portland. “When I saw the LA stuff, I had a flashback. I felt PTSD.”
The impact of these protests and riots against Portland was huge. Voters have completely revamped the city’s government structure, the county has elected district attorneys with strict crime, and police departments have reformed how they deal with protesters.
Five years later, 1,000 miles away, President Trump once again deployed federal officers to cities plagued by protests against the will of national and local officials. These recent events in Los Angeles have brought Portland back to its edge. The protests in Rose City this week have been largely peaceful, but as tensions rise, authorities hope that policy changes will be sufficient to avoid repeated violence in the 2020s and prevent federal government involvement.
“We’ve changed a lot since 2020,” Mayor Keith Wilson, the owner and political outsider of a trucking company elected on a progressive platform that fixed urban homelessness issues and improved public safety in 2024, told Politico earlier this week. “But the federal government’s overreach is something we are worried about, and we are ready to sue.”
A review conducted by an independent monitor after the 2020 protests found that the city and police departments failed to communicate with the public to inadequate training, as well as inadequate guidance on when and how to use force. These issues discovered caused distrust between the public and police, escalating rather than removing the situation.
The review and the small number of lawsuits brought against the police department due to actions taken during the 2020 protests have made major changes to the city’s police policy. Wilson and Portland Police Chief Bob Day told Politico that they reduced the use of tear gas and militarized gear, overhauled the department’s rapid response team, and founded liaison officials to build relationships with community organizers. Department members also attended training in Cincinnati and London, where they learned from descalation and crowd management experts.
“We’re seeing a huge event that’s very different from what we’ve been to in the past,” said Day, a former vice chief who was called from retirement in 2023 to become interim prime minister by then-Ted Wheeler. “From a public safety perspective, what you want to bring in is that you’re not adding to the chaos.”
Although most protests in Portland have been peaceful since these changes were in place, Sergeant Aaron Schmoutz, president of the Portland Police Union, says the city is not facing the situation it was in 2020.
“There’s a lot of tension right now,” he said.
Portland is not alone in the northwest. Also, Seattle and Spokane, Washington’s two largest cities, are rising tensions in light of anti-ice protests and federal responses in Los Angeles. Seattle Police Chief Shon Burns said on Tuesday that he would do anything with his power to protect Seattleans from those who would also hurt them or bring in intentions to restrain their First Amendment rights, and was willing to put their arrests at risk to do so. Then on Wednesday, at least eight demonstrators were arrested by Seattle Police after the trash bins burned up. Meanwhile, in Spokane, Democratic mayor Lisa Brown enacted a curfew after more than 30 people, including a former city council president, were arrested during the protests.
King said Portland protesters were willing to disrupt their bodies to stop ice behavior, such as paths and distractions for physically blocked agents. And she says the trust between the protesters and the Portland Police Department is still really low. However, she added that the community is in its own conversation about being peaceful within the class in protest and maintaining disagreement.
Terrence Hayes, a formerly incarcerated community organizer who attended the city’s criminal justice committee and supported giving more resources to police, said the city’s mood has changed since 2020.
“I don’t think we’re looking for that fight,” Hayes said. “If ice starts pushing certain lanes, of course people are trying to get up and protest, but I don’t think they’ll be destructive in the city centre.”
King added, “If someone is luring innocent people on the streets… (we) might have to be physically involved.”
There were citywide protests last week, including outside the local ice office. The majority are peaceful, Schmeitz said he has small cases of destructive behavior such as violence and arson. The department arrested about 13 people last week. For the city famous for its protests, last week was remarkably quiet as it was once called “Little Beirut” by staff members of George HW Bush (Monica, a local band proudly took it as their own).
This week, it said it shows that the new policy is already supporting Discalation. However, 2025 is very different from 2020. Portlander then protested against his police station. Currently, the target is the federal immigration equipment. Police departments will not support the ice, Day explained, but they need to prevent violence and lawsuits. He calls the grey area for the local police “a very complicated and subtle challenge.”
The Chief gave two examples. Earlier this week, Portland police removed debris piled up by protesters preventing ice contractors from entering the parking lot. At the time, the department claimed that contractors were not engaged in enforcement actions and that officers believed that moving debris would reduce tension. However, on another day, police passively looked nearby and didn’t help federal officials turn down a path through a group of similar protesters for the van carrying passers in detention migrants.
Day said under normal circumstances they would clear the streets that were blocked. But in the case of ice, they are preventing the operation of ice “we are not going to actively enforce some of these laws,” Day said. However, he added, “The ice facility itself is a free game as it is, and it is not possible for anyone to say anything can be done in that building or the area.”
According to all involved, wild cards are only a small percentage of those seeking to escalate conflicts and encourage illegal activities. Almost everyone who spoke to Politico for this article mentioned the right and left groups who are suspected of coming to peaceful protests to incite violence.
“Law enforcement agencies could be called to navigate criminal activity around the edge of free speech events.
And at the heart of the conversation is Portland’s collective identity as a city that is always willing to fight back. Chief Day focused on Portland’s longstanding culture of protest. The demonstration of free speech is one of the city’s core values, Schmoutz added. King said she and her fellow protesters hope to become targets of the Trump administration in the coming days or weeks.
But perhaps Hayes said it best: “If you push, Portland will push back,” he said. “If they come to Portland, Portland will return that Laen.”
