NBC News on Wednesday reported that the Trump administration appeared to have targeted Oregon for a surge of federal agents and a large-scale immigration operation after Minnesota.
The exclusive, based on interviews with 15 people, focused on how President Donald Trump and his staff have scrambled to respond to widespread public and political condemnation after the second fatal shooting by federal officers in Minneapolis.
It quoted an unnamed ex-White House official saying Oregon was next in line.
“The reality is, you can’t stop what you’re doing,” the official told NBC News. “This is the whole point of ICE existing in these cities, and Minnesota is not going to be the last state that ICE goes to. Oregon was next. We were not done. We need to keep going.”
It’s not clear if that’s still a possibility.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
In Oregon, immigration enforcement intensified in the fall, with federal agents smashing car windows to drag people out, pointing rifles at teenagers and other people and injuring some people during their arrests.
People have been arrested on their way to work, inside businesses and on private property. A family was arrested earlier this month at a Portland hospital’s parking lot on their way to seek emergency care for their 7-year-old daughter and a Portland Uber driver was surrounded last week by federal agents who arrested her two passengers after following them for about half a mile from Union Station.
Oregon for All, a coalition of several organizations in the state, in mid-December said federal authorities had detained more than 1,900 immigrants in Oregon last year, often without warrants.
Last Saturday, two U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis while he was volunteering to document immigration enforcement. Videos show he was shot after helping a woman who had been pushed by a federal agent.
On Jan. 8, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, 37, while she was in her car documenting immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.
The Trump administration deployed more than 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota as part of “Operation Metro Surge.” The administration has taken a step back on the operation following Pretti’s shooting, including removing Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino from his “commander at large” post.
The Minnesota operation follows a similar one in Chicago in the fall dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Portland has long been in Trump’s crosshairs, from 2020’s racial justice protests to last year’s unsuccessful attempt to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to the city to quell protests at the ICE field office south of downtown.