Portland, Oregon, has a significantly lower murder rate than the other cities that have experienced National Guard interventions. When compared to many cities of a similar size or larger that have not even been threatened with an intervention, its murder rate is especially low. Thus, I was confused as to the rationale for the Portland intervention.
The only newsworthy event that occurred in Portland right before the deployment was the arrest of conservative journalist Nick Sortor for disorderly conduct. If we were to believe Sortor’s own words, the Portland Police Department is a corrupt organization controlled by Antifa terrorists, so they arrested him instead of the alleged assailants.
Just like in Washington, D.C., with the assault on DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, I view this arrest not as the cause of the National Guard intervention, but rather the excuse – a Gulf of Tonkin-style incident intended to create a permission structure to send the military somewhere it should not be.
The Posse Comitatus Act prevents the military from conducting civilian law enforcement operations. The Trump administration has circumvented this by deploying Guardsmen to either support regular police in enforcement operations or simply have them stand in public places, doing nothing for hours.
I will not deny that mere presence can have a deterrent effect on crime. However, the cost-benefit analysis – around $1 million a day in D.C. to have Guardsmen stand around and take selfies with intrigued tourists – does not really make sense. As someone who has visited many of the subway stations and streets they “guard,” I would not say I felt unsafe before their arrival.
My point is at first glance, these interventions are completely pointless. However, when you look deeper, you realize this, like so many of Trump’s other policies, is a means to facilitate revenge or act out on petty grievances.
When viewed from that framework, the Portland intervention makes total sense. In 2020, Portland had massive demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There was also rioting, looting and vandalism, all of which were significant. However, this all happened five years ago.
Even if Portland and other cities were facing massive amounts of crime, a temporary National Guard deployment would not solve it. As always, the permanent solution to crime is to raise the standard of living for people. Very few people commit crime out of a simple desire to cause harm – the overwhelming majority of crime traces back to access to employment, housing and other resources many of us living in a place like Sartell take for granted.
The other alarming trend in the rise of America as a police state is the expansion of ICE. I will not go so far as to say ICE is the modern American Gestapo given its smaller purview and tendency to focus on nonwhite individuals, however, ICE does display alarming similarities with the secret police organizations of many authoritarian states of the past few decades.
ICE members wear masks to conceal their identities and rarely provide identification. This is done allegedly to keep agents safe from threats and violence. However, concerns about accountability and openness override these concerns. When one joins a police force, there is an inherent assumption of danger, and some of that danger does arise from necessary levels of accountability and openness.
ICE frequently avoids attempts at transparency and accountability in other ways. They have blocked legislators from accessing their facilities and performing regular oversight duties. They have provided inadequate responses to requests for information via the Freedom of Information Act. At times, they operate entirely outside the bounds of the law, deporting individuals with protected statuses (or simply deporting anyone without due process).
These actions are consistent with the ways secret police forces operate, and inconsistent with the way police forces should operate in a democracy. Combined with the random National Guard deployments, it demonstrates a chilling slide towards illiberalism.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
