The Justice Department has ordered an investigation into Portland, Oregon, police over the arrest of Nick Sortor late Thursday, the conservative influencer announced Friday morning.
The Portland Police Bureau released Sortor from custody earlier Friday, hours after he was arrested on charges of second-degree disorderly conduct as violent protests broke out near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Oregon‘s largest city.
Sortor, a 27-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., was arrested alongside two Oregon residents, according to a press release from the city’s police department. All three people were booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on the same misdemeanor charge.
Sortor said the DOJ investigation into his “wrongful arrest” will be led by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, adding that Attorney General Pam Bondi called him to “deliver this news.” He was ecstatic about the federal department’s decision.
“The Trump DOJ WILL NOT allow Portland Police to continue to do the bidding of Antifa,” he wrote on X, telling Portland police to “f*** around and find out.”
The arrests were made during a chaotic scene outside the Portland ICE facility, where agitators were getting involved in fights with other people. Sortor got caught in the middle.
He told Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin that he was recording footage of federal agents macing protesters before he was quickly surrounded and assaulted. He said he was defending himself.
“Nick says he swung back and missed, then disengaged and walked over to a group of Portland PD,” Melugin said after speaking with Sortor on the phone. “He says he was then shocked to be arrested by them, and he sat in the back of a police cruiser while officers figured out what to charge him with.”
Sortor filmed clashes between protesters and federal authorities in Portland this week, as the blue city faces a deployment of the National Guard.
Before news of the DOJ investigation dropped, Sortor said Portland police officers “made a big freaking mistake” in arresting him and teased some sort of action was coming for the police department.
The influencer also questioned why he was arrested and not “violent Antifa thugs” who have been committing violence in the city recently.
Portland Police Bureau officials said it is making arrests for specific criminal acts, noting that a lack of arrests does not preclude suspects from being charged in the future.
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“PPB members may also investigate crimes and conduct follow-up investigations into criminal activity later and will forward cases to the Multnomah County District Attorney for prosecution when feasible,” according to the police department. “As a reminder, just because arrests are not made at the scene, when tensions are high, that does not mean that people are not being charged with crimes later.”
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump moved to send 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers to Portland to crack down on recent protests. The deployment is being considered by a federal judge, who may temporarily block the Trump administration’s activation of the military in this context. A hearing in the case is scheduled for 10 a.m. local time Friday.
