Why Portland protests are drawing frogs, sharks and unicorns Julia Gomez, USA TODAY October 18, 2025 at 2:14 AM 189 Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But this isn't the Land of Oz, it's a Portland protest. Full of colorful animal costumes, some protests in Portland, Oregon, against U.S.
- - Why Portland protests are drawing frogs, sharks and unicorns
Julia Gomez, USA TODAY October 18, 2025 at 2:14 AM
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Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But this isn't the Land of Oz, it's a Portland protest.
Full of colorful animal costumes, some protests in Portland, Oregon, against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have begun to resemble whimsical zoos. A new initiative dubbed Operation Inflation may be the reason why.
"We buy a bunch of costumes and we go down and deliver them," Brooks Brown, an activist who helped create Operation Inflation, told USA TODAY. "And it kind of took off the first day."
Videos show people preparing for the protests by stepping into inflatable costumes and dancing around. But they may not have shown up to the protests with the intention of looking like a chicken, axolotl or even Reptar from the famous 90s cartoon, "Rugrats."
Inspired by the Portland Frog, a protester who began dressing in an inflatable frog costume to attend the protests, Operation Inflation gives away costumes to people protesting ICE to "help deflate (pun intended) the tensions surrounding protests," according to its website.
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1 / 21See how Portland keeps it 'weird' as ICE patrols streetsProtesters dressed as frogs have become a symbol of the movement outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland on Oct. 13, 2025 in Portland. The frog costumes began to multiply after a federal agent sprayed the air vent of a protester's frog costume during a protest in early October.'The rhetoric around all of it shifted'
When a video of the Portland Frog getting pepper-sprayed went viral, Brown saw how the narrative on the protests changed.
"We were watching the news on that and how the rhetoric around all of it shifted," Brown said. "It wasn't some 'violent Antifa protester' who gets maced, but instead frog."
After that, Operation Inflation provided costumes to protesters free of charge, and more people started to dress up. Brown says the change affected how the demonstrations have been received.
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