The South Dakota governor, acting as the homeland security secretary, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the city of Portland on this week. While there, she observed a small protest outside, which contrasts sharply to the fiery "siege" alleged by Donald Trump.
Noem was accompanied by a set of right-wing figures who were whisked from the Portland airport to the facility in her motorcade. DHS has shared more aggressive online posts featuring federal personnel conducting raids and using crowd control measures at protesters.
Portland police cleared the street outside the facility in the southern Portland area before the governor's appearance. A handful demonstrators, among them one in the outfit of a chicken and another as a sea creature, were held back.
Audio blared from a gathering spot close by, with words mentioning Trump and allegations. One protester shouted to a government videographer filming from the roof, asking whether the homeland security had been renamed the "information ministry".
Members of the press from independent publications were also restricted to the security perimeter outside, while the conservative personalities in the secretary's group—Benny Johnson, Nick Sortor, and David Media—shared social media updates of the secretary leading federal officers in a prayer session inside, delivering a motivational speech, and advising a soldier of the Oregon National Guard to "Get ready".
The secretary has repeated the president’s allegations that the group of demonstrators—who have gathered in their limited groups outside the ICE facility since the summer, including one in an inflatable frog costume—are "extremists" who have placed the building "besieged", making the deployment of government forces essential.
But, on Saturday, a court official in the city prevented the former president's effort to federalize the state's guard, stating that the his claims that the mostly calm city was "burning to the ground" were "untethered to the facts".
Following that, the court official, Karin Immergut—who was nominated to the court by Trump—broadened the ruling to block National Guard troops from other states from being used in Portland. She acted after Trump responded to her previous decision by seeking to use members of the California's guard to Portland.
Following the former president highlighted the limited yet ongoing demonstration outside the site and made inaccurate statements that Portland is "war ravaged", a growing number of his supporters, including MAGA influencers, have appeared to challenge the demonstrators.
Several of these confrontations have resulted in fights and fistfights, resulting in detentions by the officers. Nick Sortor was taken into custody after he sought to enter a gathering on a sidewalk near the ICE facility and was part of an altercation over an national banner. The influencer had before taken the flag from a demonstrator who was burning it.
Legal accusations against him were later dropped after an outcry in conservative media led the leader of the rights office of the DOJ, a department official, to threaten an investigation of the local police over claimed political bias.
Female protesters Sortor was involved in an altercation with still have pending accusations.
Over the weekend, Governor Tina Kotek, the governor, accused DHS agents in the site of trying to provoke the protesters by using unnecessary levels of chemical irritants in a residential neighborhood and inviting partisan figures to document the protesters from the roof of the facility. "They are clearly trying to antagonize the crowds," she commented.
Several of those right-wing personalities were mentioned in a official record last month as "anti-protest individuals" who "frequently reappear and harass the individuals until they are confronted or subjected to spray" and decline "repeated advice from officers to stay away from" the demonstrators.
One influencer, a previous media worker who changed careers as a partisan figure after being fired from a media outlet for plagiarism, shared video of Noem looking down from the top of the site at the limited number of demonstrators below, including an individual who sports a chicken costume to mock the former president. The influencer described the footage of the secretary observing the calm environment below: "Secretary Noem confronts Antifa militants and a costumed protester".
Regardless of the disconnect between the allegations from both officials that this facility is "encircled" from "domestic terrorists" and obvious footage of a limited group of protesters in non-threatening attire, the influencers with the secretary continued to refer to the demonstrators as threatening extremists.
While in Portland, the secretary also met with the law enforcement head, Bob Day, who has been caricatured as "politically correct" in right-wing outlets for authorizing his officers to arrest the influencer. In a social media update on the meeting, Benny Johnson asserted that the chief had "supported violent ANTIFA militants confronting journalists and officers outside ICE facility".
Her security detail then left the office past a handful of protesters on the nearby road, including one in the costume of a bear wearing a sombrero.
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