US federal agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.
The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.
Police initially responded to reports of a shooting outside the Adventist hospital campus in east Portland, the department said, before learning “that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help” about 3 miles (5km) away.
“Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital,” the police said.
“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.”
Authorities have not confirmed the condition of the injured, but police sources told the Oregonian one was shot in the leg and the other in the chest.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a man they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant connected to a Venezuelan gang. According to the agents, they opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, the statement said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene,” McLaughlin said.
Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a news conference. “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”
Bob Day, the Portland police chief, said: “This is a federal investigation. It’s being led by the FBI.”
Taking place just a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, the shooting sparked sharp condemnation, and raised fears of increasing tensions in a city that had been galvanized by anti-immigration enforcement protests late last year.
Maxine Dexter, the Democratic representative for the district where the shooting took place, who is also a doctor, said both of the injured people “are alive, but we do not know the extent of their injuries.”
She also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the city.
“ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities,” Dexter said. “Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”
Dexter also demanded a local police investigation. “We must allow our local law enforcement to do its work,” she said. “There must be a comprehensive investigation without Trump’s interference.”
Wilson, the mayor, echoed Dexter’s call for a pause on immigration enforcement in the city. He said: “We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts. Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”
Kayse Jama, an Oregon state senator who lives in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, said at an evening news conference that the “welcoming” city he arrived in as a refugee from Somalia decades ago does not need aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Addressing the federal agents, he said: “This is Oregon. We do not need you, you are not welcome and you need to get the hell out of our community.”
Zakir Khan, a Portland civil rights advocate, called on the hospital, which is part of Oregon Health and Science University, to release any security-camera footage of the incident it might have “as soon as possible”.
A man who was at the medical building told the Oregonian he saw federal officers follow a Toyota truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind him, before turning and speeding off.
Portland last year saw months of protest centered on an ICE holding facility in the city’s downtown. Donald Trump tried to deploy national guard members to the city in response, but the deployment was held up in the courts.
Jeff Merkley, one of Oregon’s two Democratic senators, urged protesters to remain calm in light of the shooting. “Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on X. “Don’t take the bait.”
The Portland police chiefechoed those pleas: “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
A banner at the top of the Portland city government website advised residents: “Respond with calm and purpose.”
Early in the evening, about a hundred protesters gathered outside city hall in downtown Portland to chant: “Abolish ICE!” A smaller number of protesters also returned to the ICE facility in south Portland, many of them dressed in the animal costumes that have helped defuse tensions in recent months.
Tensions are already high across several major cities in the US following the shooting of Good in Minneapolis.
On Thursday, the FBI took control of the investigation into that shooting, and the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence had been revoked.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction.
Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that the state “must be part of this investigation”.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to justify the deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her had been acting in “self-defense”. That narrative is at odds with video footage of the incident, which has been widely shared online.
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