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Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo this week advised residents to buy a burner phone and use encrypted messaging apps to avoid being tracked by immigration officers and federal agents.
In a nearly three-minute video posted to her Facebook account, Morillo offered ways people could “protect” themselves in response to President Donald Trump deploying the National Guard to Portland to defend Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities.
“Your phone? You should consider this a tracker and a listening device at all times,” Morillo said in her video. “With your phone, they can track your location. They can see who you met with. If you happen to organize with a bunch of different people and you all took the bus to the same secure location, guess what? They have a pattern of who you organize with, who you talk to, and how long and why.”
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Federal agents began arriving in Portland over the weekend, with one clash already reported outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
She continued, “So you should get a Faraday cage, which blocks the signal from your phone. You should disable fingerprint and facial recognition technology to unlock your phone. And you should have a pin that is longer than four numbers. If you’re going to regularly protest, I also highly recommend going to your local grocery store and buying a burner phone in cash, and using encrypted apps like Signal to communicate with people, and having disappearing messages on.”
She also warned viewers about facial recognition technology, which had been used by the FBI to track down Robert Jacob Hoopes, who is accused of injuring an ICE officer earlier this year.
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Protesters with signs gather outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, on September 28, 2025. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
“There are facial recognition technology devices that are used at most federal buildings, and most people think that they can beat that by covering their faces, but if you just cover the lower half, guess what? You have left your eyes and eyebrows, which are the most identifiable parts of you,” Morillo said.
She concluded by urging viewers to attend protests only with trusted people and to have someone outside as “jail support.”
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“I believe that we will win, but we have to be smarter, and we have to be better organized than our opposition because they have every tool available to them, and we do not,” Morillo said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Portland City Council for comment.
Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo advised protesters how to avoid being tracked by federal officers. (John Rudoff/Reuters)
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Morillo and other council members are reportedly working to expand Portland’s sanctuary policies to further limit cooperation with ICE.
