Judge Hands Down Second, Emergency Ruling Protecting Portland From National Guard Occupation

A federal judge handed down a ruling from the bench Sunday night to shield Portland from additional National Guard deployments, which she said was the move of an administration “circumventing” her earlier order.

The Trump administration announced over the weekend that it would deploy California and Texas National Guard to Portland, just hours after Judge Karin Immergut found that the conditions in the city did not warrant occupation from the state’s own Guard.

“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the [temporary restraining order] I issued yesterday?” she asked the Justice Department’s Eric Hamilton. 

“Mr. Hamilton, you are an officer of the court,” she continued, interrupting his response. “Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order, which relies on the conditions in Portland? And nothing has changed.”

She granted the request of Oregon — now joined as a plaintiff by California — asking for a second, expanded TRO that would block all federalized National Guard from “relocation, federalization, or deployment” into Portland. She attributed the sweeping relief to the “conduct of defendants.” 

The Trump administration had already appealed her first order, specifically blocking the Oregon National Guard from deploying to Portland, to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The targeting of Portland centers on protests outside one ICE facility, which peaked earlier in the summer and have since died down. The state’s brief suggests that Fox News’ playing of old B-roll from 2020 protests in Portland sparked Trump’s renewed interest in the “war-torn” city.

“There is no showing that military help is necessary to assist law enforcement or to protect law enforcement or the one federal building here,” Immergut said Sunday.

She dismissed Hamilton’s argument that the California National Guard had already been properly federalized for the protests in Los Angeles, saying that, under the statute the administration is invoking, it still needed a “colorable claim” that the Guard was necessary in Portland. The statute says the Guard can be called up to address “invasion,” “rebellion,” or if “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

The DOJ tried a last-ditch effort to get a stay of the order pending appeal, but Immergut rejected the request. The new order, same as her first, will last for 14 days.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, called Immergut’s first restraining order “legal insurrection” on Twitter.

“The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge,” he wrote.

Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) on Sunday announced that Chicago, too, is being targeted with National Guard inundation.

“This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States,” he wrote on Twitter. “No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.”