Portland locals have humorously mocked their approach to handling Donald Trump’s initiative to deploy the National Guard to their city to address ‘domestic terrorists’.

This deployment is a part of the US president’s broader strategy to curb crime rates, with a focus on Democrat-controlled cities like Washington DC and Los Angeles.

Trump said on Saturday that he was directing the Department of Defense to ‘provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged Portland’. 

Oregon’s Democratic Governor, Tina Kotek, reacted by asserting that Trump was misusing his powers by sending troops to a city that was managing well independently.

Locals took it a notch further by sharing images online showing Portland’s sunny and serene scenes, sarcastically labeling it as ‘war-ravaged’.

One local @cheryl_v_w posted a photograph of the therapy llamas stationed at Portland International Airport where the troops will be landing. 

‘Imagine the look on the faces of the troops landing in Portland when they’re being greeted by the therapy llamas at the airport,’ she wrote. 

‘Yes, that’s a real thing we have here.’ The post showed two llamas wearing light blue deely boppers and matching saddles at the airport. 

Another resident posted an image of a street lined with trees cloaked in rainbow-colored crochets with the caption: ‘Makers unite. We knit at dawn. Portland prepares for war.’ 

‘Portland is a beautiful, safe, fun, and clean city. And anyone who says otherwise hasn’t visited or enjoyed our food trucks,’ another local wrote alongside a photograph of himself in a public park. 

Several government, police and business leaders have also said soldiers are not needed in Oregon and Trump is presenting a patently false picture of the city. 

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on Saturday said there was no lawlessness or violence in his city. 

Wilson said during a news conference the number of necessary troops is ‘zero’ in Portland, ‘and any other American city’. 

‘This is an American city,’ Wilson said. ‘We do not need any intervention. This is not a military target.’

Wilson claimed that video footage showing violence in the city was from five years ago. He said the footage had been ‘recycled’. 

Wilson told the news conference: ‘If President Trump came to Portland today, what he would find is people riding their bikes, playing sports, enjoying the sunshine, buying groceries or produce from a farmers’ market.

‘We’ve had hard conversations, and we’ve done important work in the years since that footage was taken, we reformed our public safety system. 

‘We’ve refocused our community and on our economy, and we’ve redoubled our efforts to help our most vulnerable.’

Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he alleged are ‘under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists’.

‘I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,’ Trump wrote.

Trump also said he is authorizing ‘full force, if necessary’, but did not further elaborate. 

There have been numerous protests at the ICE building in South Portland over the last several months. 

People frustrated with Trump’s mass deportation policies began protesting in June, with one of the demonstrations morphing into a riot, according to police. Heavily armed law enforcement officers hit protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets.

There have been more protests in July and this month at the same facility, The Oregonian reported.  

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment on the size and scope of the upcoming military deployment in Portland. There is also no further information on when troops are scheduled to arrive.

Portland is the latest city Trump has sent troops to, with Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. getting boots on the ground over the summer.

In June, Trump deployed the National Guard and the Marines to quell rowdy protests in Los Angeles, again over his administration’s immigration policies.

In August, he federalized Washington D.C.’s local police force while also activating the National Guard, claiming that the nation’s capital had been ‘overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people’.

Following these actions, Trump has openly mused about sending troops to other cities, including New York City and Chicago.

After Trump said earlier in September that he would be sending soldiers to Memphis, the city with the highest crime rate in the United States, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee confirmed Friday that federal agents are scheduled to arrive this coming Monday.

Officers from 13 federal agencies will join roughly 150 National Guard troops and state police troopers to support local law enforcement, Lee added.

Portland, though not nearly as crime-ridden as Memphis, has had its fair share of problems over the last several years.

The city is known for its homeless problem, with many encampments crowding the formerly desirable downtown area.

Drug use was rampant in these encampments, something exacerbated by Oregon’s attempt to decriminalize formerly illicit substances.

The new law reduced possession of heroin, fentanyl and meth to the level of a parking ticket.

Fatal opioid overdoses surged, from 280 in 2019, to 628 in just the first six months of 2023 as homeless encampments and open-air drug markets spread throughout the city.

After intense pressure, state lawmakers reversed the decriminalization with a law that went into effect on September 1, 2024.

Another factor in Portland’s troubles in recent years, according to critics, was the election of Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt in May 2020.

Schmidt was sworn in just before the death of George Floyd and once costly racial justice riots began to spread across the country, including to Portland, he took a soft approach.

He vowed not to prosecute rioters unless there was evidence of ‘deliberate’ property damage, theft, or threat of force. Of 550 cases referred by police, just 47 went to trial.

More than 2,600 businesses had fled the city center by September 2022 as shoppers avoided downtown areas and retail theft began to spiral. 

However, the new district attorney for the county, Nathan Vasquez, has been focused on reducing crime, an effort he believes will help the city’s economy can recover.