Hours after a conservative journalist and influencer was arrested by the Portland Police Bureau on Thursday, the force of the Trump administration has come knocking in the city.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Friday a “full investigation” into the bureau and the city. And a pair of U.S. deputy assistant attorneys general have issued a list of demands.

According to a memo obtained by OPB, the U.S. Department of Justice is demanding body-worn camera footage and documentation surrounding the Thursday arrest of conservative personality Nick Sortor, along with an earlier incident where a journalist from right-wing outlet The Post Millennial was assaulted by a demonstrator.

Federal authorities are also looking for records connected to the city’s decision to enforce zoning laws against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, the building in South Portland that has been the focus of protests.

“While we have not reached any conclusions on these allegations, we note a consistent theme in these three allegations — all three would choose one viewpoint over another,” read the memo, signed by Harmeet K. Dhillon and R. Jonas Geissler, two civil rights attorneys at the federal DOJ.

The letter suggests federal authorities will investigate whether the three incidents merit penalties for the city in an ongoing settlement agreement between Portland police and federal authorities over how officers have treated people with mental illness in the past.

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Portland Police Chief Bob Day said that the 2014 agreement has helped shape how the city responds to events such as the ICE protest.

“We were harshly criticized in the way we responded” to racial justice protests in 2020, Day said. “We’ve changed our response … This direction they are giving us, we’ll certainly comply with, we’ll share the necessary information. I welcome the scrutiny.”

The Trump administration did not contain its ire to a quiet memo on Friday.

Leavitt railed against Portland police in a press briefing from the White House on Friday, claiming that officers had arrested Sortor “after he was ambushed by Antifa and was defending himself from these assaults.”

“Instead of arresting these violent mob members who, night after night after night, are ravaging this community, they arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos,” Leavitt said. “Everyone in this room should be extremely concerned about that.”

Leavitt added that President Trump has directed his administration “to begin reviewing aid that can potentially be cut in Portland. We will not fund states that allow anarchy.”

Video circulating online shows Sortor being arrested by Portland police officers, but not what led up to that moment. The PPB said in a release early Friday that Sortor was one of three people it had arrested for disorderly conduct for fighting outside of the ICE facility.

Sortor told a Fox News reporter that he had been knocked down by anti-ICE protestors and unsuccessfully threw a punch while on the ground in order to defend himself.

“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,” Fox quoted Sortor as saying. “Never suspected that I was going to be the target of the arrest, that they were coming in to me.”

A spokesperson for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors are reviewing the arrests. The spokesperson couldn’t say when official charges would be filed.

Day said he hadn’t read any reports and wasn’t familiar with the details of Sortor’s arrest. He rejected Leavitt’s assertion that Portland police were siding with anti-ICE demonstrators.

“I’m not standing up here with the governor or anyone else,” he told reporters. “I’m standing here as the police chief of a major American city and telling you we’re doing the job that’s expected of us.”

In separate footage from recent protests, Sortor can be seen snatching a burning American flag out of a protester’s hands and extinguishing the fire.

Federal authorities are also hoping to look into an alleged assault on Katie Daviscourt, a journalist for The Post Millennial. Daviscourt, who has covered the ICE protests for months, reported being punched in the face by a demonstrator earlier this week.

Daviscourt has said she followed the assailant and attempted to get a nearby Portland officer to make an arrest. Portland police say that officer was one of the city’s “dialogue liaison officers” who “cannot get involved in enforcement action.”

The woman assailant left the scene, and police are asking for information that could help find her.

Lastly, Portland officials said last month they would enforce the city’s zoning code, following evidence that ICE kept detainees in its Portland facility more than the allowed 12 hours.

Friday’s DOJ memo seeks “all unredacted incident reports, force reports, arrest reports, general order reports, and after-action reviews of the incidents.” It also seeks complaints about the incidents, email communications and information about the city’s zoning decisions involving the ICE building.

News of the federal inquiry adds tension, as Portland and Oregon officials square off with the federal government over the ongoing protests.

On Friday morning, attorneys for the city and state asked a judge to block President Trump’s order sending 200 National Guard members to help protect the ICE building. As of early afternoon, no decision had been made in that case.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/03/trump-portland-oregon-ice-immigration-police-protest/