Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News Tuesday that she issued an ultimatum to Portland’s top officials to contain Antifa demonstrations.
President Donald Trump said in September that he ordered troops to defend U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in Portland from Antifa after Noem requested reinforcements. On “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Noem said she told Portland’s mayor point-blank that federal authorities would “cover him up” with a surge of manpower if city leadership failed to enforce basic security measures.
“Just met with the mayor, and I’m so extremely disappointed. He’s continuing to play politics, did not commit to any of those promises, and said that he’d give me an answer by tomorrow, and I’m hopeful that he will,” Noem told Watters. “What I told him is that if he did not follow through on some of these security measures for our officers [that] we were going to cover him up with more federal resources. And that we were going to send four times the amount of federal officers here so that the people of Portland could have some safety.”
Noem said she delivered the warning during face-to-face meetings with both the mayor and the city’s police chief. She also met with the state police superintendent.
WATCH:
“I met with [the police chief] and also the superintendent of the state police. I told them what we wanted. We wanted more security here at the building, a bigger buffer zone to keep our officers safe. We wanted to have their streets opened up again and not let the anarchists run this city anymore,” Noem said.
Noem criticized local officials for leaving federal agents vulnerable.
“We would ask them to continue to back us up, like we’ve been asking for instead of what they’ve been doing the last several months, which is just leaving our officers [to] hang out to dry,” Noem said.
A White House official told the Daily Caller News Foundation that violent left-wing protests erupted in Portland more than a half a dozen times between June and September, linking some demonstrators to Antifa and others to a group that George Soros’ Open Society funded. The official cited incidents involving arson, assaults on law enforcement, and a guillotine threat against an ICE facility.
In 2019, Portland’s Rose City Antifa, one of the nation’s oldest Antifa groups, claimed responsibility for brutally attacking journalist Andy Ngo as he covered one of their rallies, leaving him with a brain hemorrhage.
Trump announced in September that he had designated Antifa as a terrorist organization and ordered investigations into its financial backers. He described the far-left group on Truth Social as a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and said authorities must trace who funds it.
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