FILE - Masked federal agents confront protesters in the driveway of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 28, 2025. Portland police have arrested 40 people outside the facility since June, but it's unclear how many federal officers have arrested.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez has filed charges against 33 of the 37 people arrested by Portland police officers in protests in 2025.
That’s a much higher percentage than his predecessor Mike Schmidt, who announced early on in his tenure that he wouldn’t be charging for certain types of behavior at protests.
Portland police have arrested 40 people outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility since June. It’s unclear how many arrests federal officers have made.
We talk to Vasquez about his approach to the challenges of this moment.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez has filed charges against 33 of the 37 people that Portland police arrested in protests this year. That’s about 90%, a much higher percentage than his predecessor Mike Schmidt, who announced early on in his tenure that he would not be charging for certain types of behavior at 2020 protests. At the same time, Vazquez has joined a huge chorus of elected officials in Oregon in saying that there is no need for federal troops in Portland.
Vasquez joins us now to talk about being a local prosecutor at a very tense moment. It’s good to have you back on the show.
Nathan Vasquez: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: What have the last weeks been like for you since the administration announced its plans to deploy federalized National Guard troops in Portland?
Vasquez: It’s certainly been challenging and a very intense time. But it’s something that we spent a lot of time thinking about, talking about, preparing for.
Miller: In what way? What were those conversations or preparations like in earlier months?
Vasquez: Once we start to see things develop around the country, things happening in Los Angeles, certainly we knew that Portland could be next. It was meetings with the Attorney General, it was talking to my staff. We started to look at how can we be a part of what I think Oregon is striving for.
Miller: It’s obvious to me what the Oregon Department of Justice, what the Attorney General’s office would do in preparation. They’re the ones that filed suit to block this, and we’ll talk a lot more about that in the coming days. But it’s less clear what kind of preparations you would do, how this affects, say, your charging decisions or the way you operate the district attorney’s office in Multnomah County.
Vasquez: And really to step back, the way that I’ve always looked at this is my job and my role of my office is to provide a very balanced, neutral approach to prosecution, that is driven by the rule of law, and that I’m to make my decisions in a very dispassionate way. And I’ve always kind of put out there, particularly when it comes to this area, that I’m going to make these decisions regardless if someone is on the right, the left, the center. The only question is going to be, did that criminal behavior meet the standards that I am held to?
Miller: Your decision not to charge Nick Sortor in the last couple of days, a conservative influencer who was arrested by Portland police, that decision got a lot of attention. I don’t think there been a time when a Portland police arrest was focused on by the White House – it was very high profile. Can you walk us through how you and the folks in your office make these highly charged decisions about charging?
Vasquez: The way that we look at it, it’s all part of our criminal justice system. And when we step back, it’s a class B misdemeanor, it’s very low level. And it was surprising that it got so much attention from the White House. But at the same time, it doesn’t affect or change how we do our job. Police make a decision about whether or not they have probable cause to make an arrest, and in this situation, I really felt like they did a great job of trying to defuse what was a very tense, chaotic moment.
And then it’s my office’s job to go through and we carefully evaluate the evidence. We go through a video, we will look at reports and we make a decision to our standard, which is do we think we can prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt? In this one, when we went through it, we made the decision that we were not going to file charges.
Miller: Nick Sortor’s attorney said there’s a 99% chance he’s going to sue the Portland Police Bureau. From your perspective, did PPB do anything wrong in arresting Nick’s Sortor?
Vasquez: I saw absolutely nothing wrong. I felt like their actions were helpful in that moment to really diffuse a tense situation.
Miller: How much attention have you been paying to charging decisions made by federal prosecutors, folks in the U.S. Attorney’s Office?
Vasquez: I certainly am monitoring and watching, because I see that they are taking people into custody and they’re dealing with it. But at the same time, we are separate offices. I am going forward under the understanding that they’re going to follow the Constitution and look at their own professional standards in making their decisions.
Miller: I bring that up because we got a release yesterday from the U.S. Attorney’s Office about a Portland man who’s been charged with a felony offense of assaulting a federal officer. He is accused of spitting on an officer’s helmet on Sunday evening. How would you approach a case like that?
Vasquez: If it were an Oregon case, we would look at charges like was it a harassment, was it an assault of a public safety officer? Because there are certain ones that involve spitting on an individual. But again, this was a federal officer. So we’ve taken the approach that when there are crimes that are committed either on federal property or against federal officers that the U.S. Attorney’s Office should handle those.
Miller: How would you describe your working relationship with federal prosecutors right now?
Vasquez: I would describe it as a very good relationship. We are very focused on the practical, everyday reality of what’s happening in Portland, beyond that one block. And so for us, it is really a consideration of how we can work in partnership to really tackle some big issues like gun violence and drug trafficking. That’s where I see our everyday partnership is very strong. I speak with the U.S. Attorney on almost a daily basis.
Miller: It’s a little bit surprising to hear that just given how much discord we hear about publicly among local officials or state officials and federal officials. But you’re saying behind the scenes, away from that one-[block], or maybe now call it a two-block area around the ICE building, it’s business as usual and a good working relationship?
Vasquez: Oh, yes. In fact, there’s a lot of prosecutors that came from my office that now work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. So we’ve had long-term relationships, we keep very good communication. Yes, there’s this big national issue. But I think what the public experience on a day-in day-out basis is: are we delivering public safety out in the community beyond those two blocks? And the answer is we’re working hard and I’m always looking for ways to improve public safety.
Miller: What are you expecting if the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals does say, in some way, that federalized troops can come to the streets of Portland?
Vasquez: I think it will intensify the issue. I believe that you’re gonna see more individuals coming into the city, maybe from out of state. I think those are all possibilities. I base that on my experiences from 2020, when we saw this kind of similar approach.
But at the same time, I’m always going to be very practical in my approach of how I deal with the United States government and we’ll hopefully find something productive for them to do. It’s hard for me to see that because, again, I’ve been very clear in my approach that my preference is that we allow local law enforcement to handle this.
Miller: Nathan Vasquez, thanks very much.
Vasquez: Thank you.
Miller: Nathan Vasquez is the district attorney for Multnomah County.
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