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The Trump administration announced a review Friday of federal funding to Portland, Oregon, following violent anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) clashes there, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt vowing, “We will not fund states that allow anarchy.”
The review comes after conservative journalist Nick Sortor was taken into custody late Thursday night while documenting the protests in Portland, something Leavitt described as an “extremely troubling incident.” She said the Department of Justice spoke with Sortor Friday morning and “will be launching a full investigation into his arrest.”
“This incident is part of a troubling trend in Portland, where left-wing mobs believe they get to decide who can visit and live in their city. It is not their city. It is the American people’s city and President Trump is going to restore that,” Leavitt said. “I just spoke with the president about this, and he has directed his team here at the White House to begin reviewing aid that can potentially be cut in Portland. We will not fund states that allow anarchy.
“There will also be an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately, including enhanced Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources. Law and order will prevail, and President Trump will make sure of it.”
PORTLAND POLICE ARREST CONSERVATIVE JOURNALIST ON ANOTHER NIGHT OF CHAOTIC ANTI-ICE CLASHES
Since early June, “Antifa terrorists have laid siege to the ICE field office in South Portland,” Leavitt said Friday.
“These radical left-wing lunatics have violently breached the ICE facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and other projectiles at law enforcement, repeatedly assault and dox officers, berate their law-abiding neighbors and have even rolled out a guillotine in front of the ICE facility,” she told reporters.
Leavitt said Sortor was “taken into custody by the Portland police after he was ambushed by Antifa and was defending himself from these assaults.”
“But instead of arresting these violent mob members, night after night after night, who are ravaging this community, the police arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos,” she added.
ICE DIRECTOR SAYS PORTLAND FACILITY FACES VIOLENCE WITH ‘LITTLE HELP FROM LOCAL POLICE’
Leavitt declared that President Donald Trump “will end the radical left’s reign of terror in Portland once and for all,” and that the president has directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland and any ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other left wing domestic terrorists.”
Sortor was charged with disorderly conduct in the second degree following his arrest late Thursday.
“This was as big of a surprise to me as it was to everybody else. All of a sudden, you know, I’m being jumped by Antifa thugs,” Sortor told Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin following his release. “I get back up, I stumble away and go back toward cops where I think, you know, at least, all right, well, maybe that’ll be a safer place for me to go. … Never suspected that I was going to be the target of the arrest, that they were coming in to me.”
On Friday, the FBI said two federal citations were issued in the past 24 hrs, as well as 27 active and pending investigations and 130 arrests since June 9.
A Portland Police Bureau spokesperson told Fox News Digital that among those arrested Thursday “was an individual known to have a significant social media presence, as well as others representing a range of political viewpoints.”
“As with all such situations, arrests are based on observed behavior and probable cause — not political affiliation or public profile. Formal charges will be determined by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office,” the spokesperson added. “PPB remains committed to protecting public safety, upholding the rights of all individuals to lawfully assemble, and enforcing the law impartially.”
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