Donald Trump orders military operation in Portland

US President Donald Trump ordered the military to the city of Portland in the state of Oregon due to alleged threats from “domestic terrorists”. Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, recently officially “Minister of War”, should provide as many soldiers as necessary to protect the city and “other domestic terrorists” at risk of immigration ICE institutions, he wrote on Truth Social.

The Republican Trump had recently classified the Antifa movement as a terrorist organization-and announced investigations. In the absence of organizational structures of the loose movement, however, it remained unclear how exactly he wanted to implement it.

With a view to the deployment of soldiers in Portland, Trump now signaled that he gave the military far -reaching powers to the use of violence – but initially remained unclear what exactly that comprises.

Portland has more than 600,000 inhabitants and describes itself as “Sanctuary City”. The term is used for cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE in different ways. The state of Oregon is ruled by the Democrats.

Last week, the city had announced that it wanted to investigate whether an ICE facility in Portland violated legal regulations. For example, people may have been held overnight or more than twelve hours – although that was not allowed.

The US President had sent soldiers to Los Angeles months ago. There, too, the mobilization of the National Guard in June was justified, among other things, with alleged chaos and resistance to civil servants from the immigration authority ICE, the raids of which trigger protests by the population more often.

The US President also sent national guards to Washington weeks ago-and justified this with supposedly sprawling crime in the US capital. Critics warn that the president uses the cities as an experiment field for an authoritarian government style.

Trump also announced a soldier’s deployment in the city of Memphis, which was also re-established in the US state of Tennessee. Again and again he threatened to use the national guard in Chicago. Both the democratic mayor there and the democratic governor of the state of Illinois rejected this.