While protests have been continuous in Portland, Oregon—and around much of the country—over the last year, crowds have flooded city streets as a reaction to shocking moments of ICE violence. On Wednesday, January 7, ICE agents shot and killed a Minneapolis legal observer, Renee Good. The community response was swift as protests filled the icy streets of the Twin Cities, and Mayor Jacob Frey vocally demanded ICE “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” The federal government’s response was to have the FBI take over the investigation of the shooting, blocking local and state law enforcement. The White House blamed Good’s death on a “left-wing conspiracy” and lied about the events that took place.
The following day, two people were shot by ICE officers in their vehicle near Adventist Health hospital in the southeast side of Portland. ICE claims, like the officers did in Minneapolis, that the two alleged Venezuelan migrants had “weaponized their vehicle.” After being shot the two fled in their vehicle three miles to an apartment complex parking lot where they ultimately made an emergency medical call and were subsequently arrested and sent to separate critical care hospitals. DHS then went to social media to post photos of the alleged arrestees, saying, without providing evidence, that they were associates of the Tren de Aragua gang and involved in sex crimes.
“This is Oregon. We do not need you. You’re not welcome. And you need to get the hell out of our community,” said Oregon State Senator Casey Jama, himself a former refugee from Somalia, at a press conference just hours after the shooting.
Within hours, organizations called for demonstrations. Labor unions and immigrant rights groups held a candlelight vigil in front of city hall, across a park from the Justice Center that had acted as the center of the city’s 2020 protest wave.
“It is infuriating that this administration thinks that they can send their armed goons into our community to spill blood and expect no accountability,” said City Councilor Candace Avalos, whose district is home to the largest number of immigrants and refugees in the City of Portland.
“It is infuriating that this administration thinks that they can send their armed goons into our community to spill blood and expect no accountability.”
At another rally on January 8, to mark how that violence has now hit closer to home, people crowded into the “fishbowl,” the amphitheater in the federal Terry Schrunk Plaza that was the site of over a dozen confrontations between Proud Boys and antifascist demonstrators during Trump’s first term. Other demonstrators set an American flag ablaze in front of the Justice Center, while others held signs placing blame solely on ICE and the president that funds them.
After the rally concluded, nearly 600 protesters reconvened at the South Waterfront ICE facility on Macadam Avenue, where more militant antideportation groups like Portland Contra las Deportaciones and PDX Against ICE gathered. Dozens of people linked together at the front of the crowd took up the chant: “I don’t see no riot here! Why are you in riot gear?” Across from them police advanced, forcefully pushing demonstrators who had done little more than hold signs condemning the accelerating violence of Trump’s “mass deportations” program. This has been the site of protest encampments and repeated confrontations between protesters and federal officers and right-wing media performers, often livestreaming their incursions with activists. An anger permeated the crowds, which were the largest they had been since September 2025, when Trump first promised (unsuccessfully) to send in the National Guard.
On September 28, 2025, federal officers stormed the nonviolent protest crowd, using an aggressive form of pepper spray referred to as “bear spray” as a crowd dispersal agent against local organizers. That night, federal officers were nowhere to be found. Portland Police Department officers formed a riot line before pushing demonstrators out of the streets, brutally hitting and dragging them, and arresting at least a half dozen people. While the frog costumes remained a common meme, the intensity of law enforcement responses has led to a greater reliance on traditional “black bloc” clothing to provide anonymity and the ability for demonstrators to engage in militant tactics as a group.
“Unfortunately, the escalation in ICE violence doesn’t surprise me,” says Tyler Fellini, executive director of the local community-labor coalition Portland Jobs With Justice, which works in solidarity with abolitionist causes and acts as a central hub for organizing in the city. “I’m concerned that the explicit endorsement from the Trump administration and members of Congress is paving the way for more and more state violence in the same way that we saw Trump in his last term pave the way for more informal far-right violence.”
Fellini was one of those assaulted by federal officers on September 28. He returned on the night of January 8 to join others in the crowded residential streets surrounding the ICE processing facility.
“There are so many more people coming into the movement right now and with that we have to figure out a way to direct that energy into something concrete,” says Holly Brown, who organizes with Portland Contra las Deportaciones, who were involved in organizing vigils and participating in the mass actions at the ICE facility. “For those of us on the ground [the shooting and expanded ICE funding] means we need to get more serious about our organizing, build up our base, and advance demands to really challenge the Trump administration.”
Portland organizers have been busy since last September, fighting for, among other demands, the closure of the South Waterfront ICE facility. The issue has been a fraught one for city officials since they say it’s unclear what can be done to end the facility’s operation. In September, the city issued a land-use violation notice over situations when ICE held detainees for more than 12 hours, the legal limit for this type of facility. In December, Portland’s city council established an ordinance to impose fees on landlords of ICE facilities to recoup protest costs, understanding that ICE causes the disturbance rather than the community members responding to them. Councilor Angelita Morillo, who introduced the measure alongside Councilor Mitch Green, pointed to more than $300,000 in overtime claimed by Portland police, as well as their use of chemical weapons, which requires expensive cleanup that further drains an already taxed city budget.
Protesters returned to the ICE facility again the following night and through the weekend, alongside other protests and candlelight vigils held across the city.
“Cities impose impact-based assessments on stadiums, convention centers, nightlife districts… not because they have constant crowds, but because when crowds do happen, those facilities generate extraordinary public service obligations,” said Morillo, suggesting that these types of disturbances are structural because they are endemic to ICE’s conduct. “We have very limited tools to address what’s going on at detention facilities as a local government… but we have an opportunity here to do something.”
In December, Portland’s city council established an ordinance to impose fees on landlords of ICE facilities to recoup protest costs, understanding that ICE causes the disturbance rather than the community members responding to them.
Responses were mixed; some saw this as a clear way to push out potential landholders from leasing the space to ICE, while others thought it was wholly insufficient of an action and that outright eviction was the only ethical solution.
The January 8 shooting is likely to further grow the movement that has already captured the city, but there are real questions about which strategy comes next. Organizations like Portland Contra las Deportaciones have said that they want to focus on building a rapid response network more capable of intervening in arrests. Right now, organizers in different parts of the city have created neighborhood-specific threads on encrypted messaging apps where they can track ICE appearances and pull people out at the point of arrest.
October’s No Kings protest brought out over 40,000 people into Portland’s streets, the largest demonstration since 2018’s Women’s March. There, ICE was the primary issue discussed, with many organizations involved acting as a funnel to get more people involved in fighting deportations. But it remains a question how those numbers will translate into direct resistance at the ICE facility or at the point of arrest. As ICE expands its operations in Portland it has been targeting schools, something that has pushed parents and teachers in neighborhoods like St. Johns and Parkrose to take action, locking down facilities, holding training for volunteers, and even keeping students at home. This has caused many to question what the next steps should be to scale up resistance to match ICE’s operations.
“It is not just enough to mobilize in the streets—we need to build real power that can disrupt the status quo,” says Fellini. “We need strikes and shutdowns that impact the flow of capital, and we need to do more than just reach for our phones when we see injustice happening.”
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