Portland, Oregon was my sanctuary as a teenager. I was a weird kid, a label I mostly embraced. But being different in my hometown rural north Idaho was exhausting. When I needed to recharge myself, I would drive the nine hours to Portland to bask in the city that accepted me just as I was.

Maybe that is the Trump administration’s problem with Portland today: it is literally a sanctuary city.

Oregon became the first state to pass a sanctuary bill in 1987. Thirty years later, Portland passed a sanctuary city resolution. These laws prohibit state and city officials, including police, from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.

Since September, President Trump has been threatening to send National Guard troops into Portland, ostensibly to quell protests in what he calls a “burning hell hole.” Oregon lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, united to reject this federal intervention in the Rose City, and are working together to prevent it.

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