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The organization has removed a photo that showed riot police from South America.
The Oregon Republican Party has swiftly removed a misleading image showing South American riot police from its social media communications about President Trump’s deployment of National Guard personnel in Portland. The Guardian was the first to highlight the party’s inappropriate use of unrelated stock images, prompting the Oregon Republicans to acknowledge to Hyperallergic that the image was indeed posted and later deleted.
This controversial image, which appeared on platforms such as X, Facebook, and Instagram, consisted of a mishmash of two snapshots—one featuring a small formation of riot police and the other capturing a crowd with raised phones amid smoke. The post described, “Today POTUS deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland after a judge ruled that Oregon’s National Guard troops could not be dispatched to secure federal facilities and personnel.”
The party opted to delete the posts after the Guardian pointed out that the police image was a stock photograph from 2008 depicting “South American riot police,” available on Getty Images, a site commonly used by news outlets for various images. Speculation among journalists suggests the police force in the image may be Ecuadorian, characterized by the Spanish word polícia emblazoned on one of their shields.
The riot police image was overlapped onto a separate stock photo from Pexels, named “anonymous people standing on a street among smoke during protests at night.” The upper right corner of the image featured the emblem of the Oregon Republican Party.
In an official statement provided to Hyperallergic, an Oregon Republican Party spokesperson stated that a volunteer had put together the image collage to convey breaking news about the National Guard deployment to Portland.
The spokesperson clarified, “The background for this announcement was crafted using stock images from Canva, which—unbeknownst to us—contained foreign visuals. We did not intend or assert that these images were taken in Portland.” They indicated that the post was promptly eliminated once the misunderstanding came to light.
The Trump administration has previously deployed 2,400 National Guard members to Washington, DC, and 300 to Los Angeles. It has also dispatched an additional 200 troops to Chicago.
After a court ruling temporarily barring troop deployment to Oregon on October 5, the Trump administration allegedly declared that National Guard forces would still be sent. Reports indicate that President Trump is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops, categorizing anti-ICE protests as “criminal insurrection.”
By Tuesday afternoon, the text contents of the Oregon Republican Party’s post remained visible. The post featured an extensive unattributed quotation aligned with remarks made on Fox News this week by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claiming bounties were being placed on ICE officials’ heads. A series of hashtags linked to the post referenced Portland, ICE, and the phrases “Stop the riots” and “Lock them up.”
The edited image portrays a scene described by Trump as characteristic of a “war-ravaged” city. Conversely, one of the most recognizable visuals of the Portland protests features a protester dressed in an enormous inflatable frog costume standing off against police in riot gear. Clips on TikTok captured police attempting to spray pepper spray into the costume’s ventilation.
Isa Farfan is a staff writer for Hyperallergic. She graduated from Barnard College in May 2024 with a degree in Political Science and English, and was involved with the Columbia Daily Spectator’s Arts section.
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