The order temporarily stops Trump’s and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to deploy 200 Oregon Guard troops to Portland to guard federal buildings

By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from federalizing and deploying Oregon National Guard troops to Portland following a challenge from the state and the city of Portland.

Judge Karin Immergut of the U.S. District Court in Portland granted the city and the Oregon Department of Justice a temporary restraining order Saturday afternoon, stopping for now Trump’s and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to deploy 200 Oregon Guard troops to Portland to guard federal buildings.

The order expires Oct. 18, and the parties will discuss Oct. 17 whether the order should be extended for another two weeks. Federal lawyers have until Oct. 17 to argue for a preliminary injunction to block the temporary restraining order.

In her 30-page opinion, Immergut issued a powerful rebuke of Trump’s perception of his executive power and found he violated the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees police power within the states resides with the states. Immergut said protests in Portland were not by any definition a “rebellion” nor do they pose the “danger of a rebellion.”

“Furthermore, this country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

Oregon Guard members have in recent days been training at Camp Rilea in Warrenton in preparation for a potential activation to Portland. They now go back under the command of Gov. Tina Kotek, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a Saturday evening news conference.

“Today’s ruling halts what appears to be the president’s attempt to normalize the United States military in our cities,” Rayfield said. “Mobilizing the United States military in our cities is not normal, it should not be normal, and we will fight to make sure that it is never normal.”

Portland’s Mayor Keith Wilson at the same news conference said the state “won through peace.”

“I’ve said from the very beginning, the number of federal troops that are needed or wanted is zero,” he said.

Kotek in a statement Saturday evening said the ruling meant “the truth has prevailed.”

“There is no insurrection in Portland,” Kotek continued. “No threat to national security. No fires, no bombs, no fatalities due to civil unrest. The only threat we face is to our democracy — and it is being led by President Donald Trump.”

Oregon’s senior U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in a statement Trump was provoking, not quelling, conflict by trying to deploy federal troops.

“I will keep working with local and state officials to ensure Trump does not keep wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to make Portland the center of his perverse fantasy about conducting assaults on U.S. cities,” Wyden said.

Trump at a Tuesday speech with military leaders said “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds” for the U.S. military. In the same meeting he described Portland as “like World War II.”

By Saturday morning, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Trump had notified him that he would soon federalize 300 National Guard troops in Illinois to guard federal property in Chicago, against Pritzker’s wishes. It’s unclear yet what bearing Immergut’s ruling in Oregon could have on any lawsuits brought against Trump in Illinois over the attempted deployment there.

Trump has claimed in posts on his social media site TruthSocial that the ICE processing facility south of downtown Portland is under attack by anti-fascists and domestic terrorists. He used the site to announce on Sept. 27 that he’d attempt to deploy troops to Portland.

The facility has drawn weekly protests of just a couple dozen people in recent months, and they have remained mostly peaceful. The local U.S. attorney has brought charges against 26 people since early June for crimes at the protest site, including arson and resisting arrest.

Protests last weekend grew to a couple hundred following Trump’s call for federal reinforcement. The protests have stayed mostly peaceful, with Portland Police arresting several men throughout the week for fighting, including a right-wing influencer, according to reporting in The Oregonian. The U.S. Justice Department said Friday it’s launching an investigation into the Portland Police Department over that influencer’s arrest.

On Saturday, as hundreds protested at the ICE facility, federal agents used chemical sprays on the crowd and several people were arrested, according to reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting.

“I call on all federal law enforcement to meet the high standards set by the Portland Police Bureau,” Wilson said. “We need them to focus on transparent use of force, clear officer identification, strict limits on chemical munitions and mandatory body worn cameras. The Federal Protective Services’ core values are service, integrity, honor and vigilance. Now is the time to live up to those principles, not erode them with masks and violence.”

Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, who represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District that includes parts of Portland, said she peacefully protested in the city’s Lloyd District on Saturday, and that she is concerned about the excessive force she saw federal officers using against protestors in videos taken at the ICE facility south of downtown.

“It is absolutely antithetical to your First Amendment rights, and we know that the administration is not encouraging restraint at this moment, so please continue to stay away from the ICE facility,” she said.

In a two-hour hearing over the temporary restraining order Friday, senior assistant Oregon attorney general Scott Kennedy called the attempted federal deployment “one of most dramatic infringements on state sovereignty in Oregon’s history.”

Eric Hamilton, a lawyer for the federal government, called protestors outside the ICE facility in Portland “vicious and cruel” and said federal police, ICE agents and Department of Homeland Security agents were overworked and needed Guard reinforcement.

Rayfield requested the restraining order motion on behalf of the state and the city of Portland as part of their broader lawsuit filed against Trump, Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

That suit, also filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, alleges the federal leaders and their agencies by attempting to send troops to Portland are violating the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees police power within states resides with the states. They also allege the federal government is violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally forbids military members from conducting domestic law enforcement. The state and Portland also allege the city is being singled out for political retaliation.

Alex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. This story first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.