A US senator is warning that acts of unprovoked violence against protesters from troops deployed to American cities by President Donald Trump are part of a “deliberate” strategy to provoke backlash and justify further crackdowns on civil liberties.
“Trump’s troops are deliberately attacking peaceful protesters to incite violence,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who has watched as the city of Portland in his home state has been swarmed by federal police in recent days as part of an effort by the Trump administration to crack down on protests at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.
“The goal is to generate riots to justify the expansion of authoritarian measures and to strengthen the case for the troop deployments,” Merkley continued. “Let me be emphatically clear: There is no ‘invasion’ or ‘rebellion’ that justifies the federalization of the National Guard.”
“Unlike former deployments in support of citizens’ rights like attending school—this is about attacking citizens’ right to peacefully protest,” he said. “Our republic is in big trouble.”
Last week, Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary troops” to Portland, which he described as “war-ravaged” and “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Trump authorized the military to use “full force, if necessary.”
Portland residents and police have found Trump’s description of their city laughable. As Portland police official Craig Dobson testified last week, “For the most part, nightly ICE-Facility protests since July 18, 2025, have been limited to fewer than thirty participants. The protests have been largely sedate during this time.”
On Saturday, Trump made the similarly fanciful claim that “Portland is burning to the ground” at the hands of “paid insurrectionists,” and said he was deploying 200 Oregon National Guard troops to the city to patrol the protests.
In a ruling Saturday night, a federal judge agreed that Trump’s descriptions of Portland were “untethered to facts,” ruling that the protests outside ICE facilities there did not meet the high legal standard for Trump to deploy the National Guard.
As The Oregonian pointed out, his description of Saturday’s protests “contrasted sharply with scenes unfolding simultaneously outside the city’s ICE facility and ignored decisions by the federal government to promote and, in fact, create images of disorder around the ICE building.” The report continued:
At protests on Saturday, it was federal law enforcement agents who escalated tensions in South Portland, according to Portland residents, reporters on the ground and videos on social media.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the ICE facility on Saturday afternoon to protest immigration enforcement and Trump’s planned deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to monitor the Portland protests. They heckled agents, shouted and carried signs.
They also formed a line in front of the building on a public sidewalk, so every time a car left the building’s garage, dozens of federal agents walked out of the building and moved protesters away from the driveway.
But by mid-afternoon, federal agents began using chemical crowd control on the protesters, pointing less-lethal guns that sprayed pepper balls into the crowd and throwing tear gas canisters.
Merkley highlighted one particularly egregious case in which a 19-year-old protester, identified as Leilani, was shown arguing with a federal police officer in riot gear.
After being ordered to move away from the building to allow a car to exit the garage, The Oregonian reports that “she complied but was hurling curse words and insults at the two officers in front of her when a third agent wearing a gas mask approached her. Within 10 seconds, the officer directed a canister at the 19-year-old’s face and doused her with chemical spray.”
Other similar cases were documented at protests over the past month in which federal police have responded with violence to protesters who posed no clear threat.
Another video from Portland Friday night shows federal officers pushing protesters who blocked the building’s driveway into an intersection before hitting them with volleys of tear gas, smoke, and pepper balls.
Troy Brynelson, a reporter on the scene from Oregon Public Broadcasting, said: “You can see what almost looked like fireworks, those are flash bangs from federal officers. It wasn’t clear what the crowd did to provoke this. OPB reporters didn’t observe anything before the officers started using the gas.”
(Video: Oregon Public Media)
“You’re gassing an entire neighborhood for nothing!” one protester is heard shouting.
In another video from Friday, an agent is shown shooting pepper spray into the air intake vent of an inflatable frog costume worn by a protester, which activist Joe Gallina pointed out was “a major health risk.” A video from the next night shows the same frog alongside dozens of other protesters standing across from a line of riot police several yards away. As they heckled police, they were blasted with another round of pepper balls.
These sorts of scenes have played out in other places where Trump has launched militarized crackdowns. Last week, in Chicago, a man on a bicycle was chased by several federal agents after shouting, “Fuck Trump” to them at an intersection.
At protests outside Chicago’s Broadview facility last weekend, peaceful protesters and journalists were hit with pepper spray and rubber bullets, while one reporter was briefly taken into custody. Another journalist for Chicago’s CBS News affiliate was blasted with a pepper ball as she was driving with the window down outside the facility on Sunday, with no protesters in the area.
On Monday, attorneys representing journalists and protesters who were attacked filed a lawsuit alleging that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was committing the “illegal and brutal suppression of First Amendment rights.”
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale, or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit,” the complaint states.