Portland Frog seen hopping and chanting outside Charlotte DHS office. Who he is
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Border Patrol in Charlotte
U.S. Border Patrol began making rounds in Charlotte on Saturday morning.
This follows recent Border Patrol activity in Chicago that made headlines, with some reports alleging agents violated people’s rights.
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For some, it may sound like a fever dream: a frog and a unicorn, arms locked, dancing in circles to Spanish and rap music in front of federal police.
But that was reality in south Charlotte Sunday night, where 60 people were protesting against the U.S. Border Patrol in front of the Department of Homeland Security office.
And the frog and unicorn were two of those protesters wearing blow up costumes.
“I’m just trying to make sure everyone in the country knows that we are not violent people,” said Bradley W., the person wearing the frog costume. “We are here to make sure that we stand up for our communities. The good people in our communities that do not need to be obstructed from the justice that they deserve.”
Protests have cropped up around Charlotte after masked Border Patrol agents in paramilitary gear — their license plates sometimes hidden — began making arrests in the city’s immigrant communities Saturday morning. In its first two days, DHS has said it’s arrested over 130 people accused of being “illegal aliens.”
Video showed Border Patrol agents also briefly arresting a U.S. citizen in Charlotte before releasing him.
The department has not released the names or paperwork of people arrested, and has not said where they have been taken.
This is where the frog costume comes in.
Commonly known as the “Portland Frog,” or the “Portland Frog Brigade,” this particular costume has become a symbol for people protesting ICE and Border Patrol in cities across the country. The moniker comes from protesters who donned the outfits in Portland, Oregon, after National Guard troops were deployed there in October as the Trump administration expands the scope of militarized federal police inside U.S. cities.
Origins of the frog costume
According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, costumed protesters may not have even started with inflatable suits. Instead, it seems the trend began with a person in a chicken onesie outside of a Portland ICE building for months prior to the protests, the outlet reported.
But when National Guard troops were deployed in Portland in October, the costumes evolved into inflatable frogs and quickly snowballed into people going for other animals and characters as well. And as images of Portland’s protests went viral, other U.S. cities took note.
In Sunday’s protest in Charlotte, a woman showed up in an inflatable alien costume, blaring music from a speaker. At Charlotte’s No Kings Protest in October, some people wore inflatable chicken, dinosaur, and pig costumes.
Costumes have also appeared in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where people have protested ICE as well.
Protesters in Portland have said the costumes are not only funny, but serve a strategic purpose.
One man, named Seth Todd, told an Associated Press reporter it was a way of “fighting absurdity with absurdity,” by having unarmed, costumed protesters juxtaposed with armed federal agents.
This story was originally published November 17, 2025 at 1:54 PM.
