The department’s acting secretary met with reporters and blamed local Oregon officials amid criticism that he has gone too far to suppress protests in Portland.
Senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security addressed the increased presence of federal agents in Portland, Ore., in a press briefing for the first time on Tuesday, defending the tactics of the agents who have been widely criticized for escalating an already tense conflict with protesters.
They said agents of the department would remain in the city until the unrest had subsided.
Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, cast blame for the unrest on Portland politicians who have publicly pleaded that he remove the agents from the city. But Mr. Wolf said the crackdown — which has included personnel from the U. S. Marshals and tactical agents from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in addition to the Federal Protective Service, which was already stationed in Portland — was specific to the Pacific Northwest city, distancing his department from President Trump’s commitment this week to send agents to other major cities, from Oakland to New York.
“Violent anarchists in Portland versus normal city criminal activity behavior by gangs and criminal element, those are two different things,” Mr. Wolf said, adding that the department had recorded 43 arrests in the protests. “What we have in Portland is very different than what we see in other cities.”
The Trump administration’s plan, revealed on Monday, to send 150 Homeland Security Investigations special agents to Chicago for 60 days is separate from the deployment of camouflage-wearing tactical agents in Portland, but the deployment of federal agents to another major city has stoked concern among local mayors and governors that the efforts are making the unrest worse.
Mayors throughout the United States have called on the administration to pull back the agents, and even Tom Ridge, the first homeland security secretary, criticized the deployment on Tuesday.
“It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to a unilateral, uninvited intervention into one of my cities,” Mr. Ridge said in an interview with Sirius XM radio.
