A federal judge extended an order barring President Donald Trump‘s federalization and deployment of the National Guard to Portland, as she prepares to issue a final ruling later this week.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut has continuously sided with Oregon officials over the Trump administration about whether the president lawfully ordered the deployment of the National Guard in September, further extending her order blocking the deployment of any troops to Portland through Friday.
Immergut held a three-day trial last week featuring testimony related to Trump’s claims that protests over federal immigration operations grew so unruly he needed to call in the National Guard to protect federal assets and officials. The federal judge said that while she is still reviewing the evidence and testimony from the trial, based on her early reading of the evidence, the administration’s claims of violence in the immediate weeks before the deployment were unfounded.
“Based on the trial testimony, this Court finds no credible evidence that during the approximately two months before the President’s federalization order, protests grew out of control or involved more than isolated and sporadic instances of violent conduct that resulted in no serious injuries to federal personnel,” Immergut said in her order late Sunday. “The violence that did occur during this time period predominately involved violence between protesters and counterprotesters, not violence against federal officers or the ICE facility.”
Immergut also claimed that testimony “has not shown that ICE was unable to effect arrests or otherwise perform the agency’s duties” and downplayed evidence of protesters blocking the driveway of the ICE facility in Portland.
The federal judge said the order would be extended through 5 p.m. local time on Friday, which she also said would be the latest she will issue a final order on the matter. With the extended order, no troops — either federalized Oregon National Guard members or federalized National Guard members from other states — may be deployed to Portland.
The full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will review the legality of Trump’s federalization and deployment of troops to Portland, after a three-judge panel on the appellate court allowed the deployment to go forward. The full appeals court has vacated the three-judge panel’s ruling and has not set a timeline for when it will hear the case.
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Trump’s National Guard deployment to Chicago has also faced similar court-issued pauses, with both a federal district court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals blocking troops from being sent into the city to protect federal assets. The Supreme Court is currently weighing a petition on its emergency docket to lift the block on the Chicago deployment.
In Los Angeles, troops have been permitted to protect federal assets and personnel amid unrest over federal immigration operations since June. While the deployment faced initial hurdles in a federal district court, it has been allowed to proceed uninterrupted since a federal appeals court panel gave the green light shortly after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled against the administration.