US border agent shoots and wounds two people in Portland

PORTLAND, Oregon – A U.S. immigration agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland on Thursday, prompting city and state officials to call for calm following public outrage over the ICE shooting death of a Minnesota woman just a day earlier.

“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,” Portland Police Chief Bob Day said in a statement.

The Portland incident occurred Thursday afternoon while U.S. Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

According to DHS, the driver, a suspected Venezuelan gang member, allegedly attempted to "weaponize" his vehicle against the agents. In response, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver and a passenger then drove away. Reuters was unable to independently verify the circumstances of the shooting.

Portland police said the incident took place near a medical clinic in the eastern part of the city. About six minutes after arriving at the scene and confirming federal agent involvement, officers were informed that two people – a man and a woman with gunshot wounds – were seeking help roughly two miles northeast of the clinic.

Police applied tourniquets to both victims before transporting them to a hospital. Their condition was not immediately known.

At a news conference Thursday evening, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, both Democrats, said details about the shootings were still unclear, including whether the violence was connected to immigration enforcement.

While the FBI investigates, both leaders called for a pause in federal immigration operations in the state pending a full and independent inquiry.

“There was a time when we could take them at their word,” Wilson said, referring to federal officials’ accounts of the shooting. “That time is long past.”

State Senator Kayse Jama, who came to the U.S. 28 years ago as a refugee from Somalia, also addressed federal immigration agents: “We do not need you, you are not welcome, you need to get the hell out of our community.”

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced late Thursday that his office will open a formal investigation to determine whether any federal officer acted beyond the scope of lawful authority. “We have been clear about our concerns with excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland and nationally,” Rayfield said.

The Portland shooting comes a day after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car in Minneapolis, sparking two days of protests in the city.

Both ICE and Border Patrol officers have been deployed across U.S. cities as part of Republican President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. While the aggressive enforcement actions have been praised by Trump’s supporters, Democrats and civil rights groups have criticized them as unnecessary provocation.

U.S. officials have argued that criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists increasingly use vehicles as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes challenged those claims.

-Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Brad Brooks, and Jasper Ward; Additional reporting by Akanksha Khushi. Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Costas Pitas, Diane Craft, Paul Thomasch, and Stephen Coates/Reuters