A Sense of Doubt blog post #3920 - National Guard Deployment permanently blocked from Portland, OR
Appropriate for Veteran's Day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/portland-oregon-national-guard.html
Judge Permanently Blocks National Guard Deployments to Portland for ICE Protests
With her temporary block expiring, Judge Karin Immergut said the Trump administration had failed to prove that protesters were hampering President Trump’s policies.
President Trump overstepped
his authority when he sought to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Ore.,
to protect the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office there, a federal
judge ruled on Friday, issuing a permanent block on troop deployments to the
city in response to anti-ICE demonstrations.
Judge Karin J. Immergut of
U.S. District Court, who was nominated to the bench by Mr. Trump, had
previously issued a preliminary injunction blocking the president’s order
federalizing National Guard soldiers in Oregon in a lawsuit that was brought by
the States of Oregon and California and the City of Portland.
In her final 106-page ruling,
Judge Immergut rejected arguments from government lawyers that protests at the
ICE building made it impossible for federal officers to carry out immigration
enforcement, represented a rebellion or raised the threat of rebellion. She
also found that the attempt to use National Guard soldiers in Oregon had
violated the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which gives states any powers
not expressly assigned to the federal government.
“The evidence demonstrates
that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not
requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building,
exceeded the president’s authority,” she wrote.
Judge Immergut also disputed the president’s claim that antifa, at least in Portland, is an organized and cohesive group working against the federal government. She said testimony from the regional director for ICE about the level of damage at the Oregon facility or how disruptive the protests were was not believable, noting that demonstrators had “minimally impeded” federal workers. She added that her ruling does not preclude future efforts by the president to deploy the National Guard to Oregon.
Federal lawyers indicated at
a three-day trial last week that if Judge Immergut ruled against them, they
intended to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San
Francisco. With the legal battle expected to continue, Judge Immergut stayed
the portion of her ruling that would have reverted control of federalized guard
soldiers back to Oregon’s governor for 14 days, essentially maintaining the
status quo. A similar case involving the use of National Guard troops in
Illinois is currently before the Supreme Court.
“Oregon does not want or need military intervention, and
President Trump’s attempts to federalize the guard is a gross abuse of power,”
she said in a statement.
But the Department of
Homeland Security objected to the judge’s characterization of the protests in
Portland.
“President Trump is using his lawful authority to direct the National Guard to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following months of violent riots where officers have been assaulted and doxxed by left-wing rioters,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary with the department, said in a statement. “The president’s lawful actions will make Portland safer.”
Daily demonstrations began outside Portland’s ICE building in
early June, after the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement.
The crowds have generally been small — usually fewer than a few dozen people —
and peaceful, but protesters have occasionally blocked the building’s driveway.
They typically dispersed when federal officers in riot gear appeared.
A few confrontations, however, have turned violent, with federal
officers using tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper-spray balls. The protests,
now into their fifth month, have strained the Federal Protective Service, the
agency charged with guarding U.S. government buildings.
On Sept. 27, Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he planned to
use “full force” to protect “war-ravaged Portland.” Later that day, Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Governor Kotek to activate 200 National Guard
troops to help federal officers at the ICE building. Ms. Kotek refused, and the
Trump administration responded by federalizing the soldiers and preparing to
send them into Portland.
The lawsuit argued
that the president had failed to demonstrate that the deployment was justified.
Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, a president may use the National Guard on U.S.
soil in only three circumstances: a foreign invasion; a rebellion, or threat of
a rebellion; or if the laws of the nation cannot be enforced with existing
resources.
During the trial last week, administration lawyers argued that
the last two conditions applied in Oregon.
In her final ruling, Judge Immergut disagreed on both counts and
said the demonstrations, with a few notable exceptions, were largely peaceful
and not as disruptive nor as dangerous as federal officials suggested.
The judge also wrote that she had been “deeply troubled” to
discover that a small squad of Oregon National Guard troops were deployed at
the ICE building after she had temporarily blocked their arrival in October.
At trial, federal lawyers acknowledged that a group of nine
Guard soldiers had worked a shift at the facility on Oct. 4 starting in the
late morning and stretching into late evening — after the judge had issued a
temporary restraining order at 3:40 p.m. A few hours after the order, the
administration flew 200 California National Guard troops to Oregon, apparently
to replace the Oregon soldiers who had been barred from the ICE building.
“In other words,” she wrote, “defendants had time to order and
coordinate the transport of federalized California National Guardsmen from Los
Angeles to Portland but needed more time to communicate with the Oregon
National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility.”
Judge Immergut wrote
that while she was not citing the federal government for contempt of court,
“this court expects defendants will provide further explanation when ordered to
do so.”
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2511.11 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3785 days ago & DAD = 439 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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