A federal trial in Portland about the president’s authority to deploy the National Guard to the city got off with a stunning revelation: Troops briefly deployed to a federal immigration building in South Portland this month, appearing to defy a court order issued hours earlier blocking their deployment.
Emails summarizing the federal response indicate nine members of the Oregon National Guard were sent to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland in the early hours of Oct. 5. Those emails were submitted to the court as a trial exhibit.
“A nine Soldier ‘small response team’ completed the first shift at the ICE Facility,” according to the Oct. 5 email.
Jean Lin, special counsel for the Justice Department, confirmed some of those deployment details to U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut on Wednesday, minutes before trial began.
Immergut issued a restraining order on Oct. 4, barring the president from federalizing the Oregon National Guard and blocking their deployment. Later, on Oct. 5, she issued another order temporarily blocking National Guard members from anywhere in the country from deploying to Oregon.
“We’ll talk later about whether that’s contempt,” the judge responded to Lin Wednesday.
For the next three days, Immergut will preside over a trial that’s expected to touch on a range of issues, from lofty legal arguments about the authority and limitations of presidential powers, to specific ways the Portland Police Bureau has evolved its response to protests since 2020, and rising tensions between local and federal law enforcement officers.
The trial comes as a response to a lawsuit filed by the city of Portland, along with the state of Oregon and later California, to block the Trump administration from deploying the military to Portland.
Opening arguments
Immergut will ultimately have to determine whether President Donald Trump followed federal law when he federalized 200 members of the Oregon National Guard, and which, apart from the brief deployment disclosed Wednesday, has been blocked by the courts from sending the military to the city.
During opening statements, the city of Portland’s Caroline Turco told Immergut the evidence at trial would show the federal government has untapped law enforcement resources that could be sent to the ICE building. She also said, so far, the local public safety system has been well equipped to handle any unlawfulness associated with the protests.
Turco told Immergut, the city of Portland “does not need the National Guard.”
Those sentiments were echoed by the Oregon Department of Justice’s Scott Kennedy, who said the military cannot perform the same role as domestic law enforcement and told Immergut the case “is a test of the outer bounds of presidential authority.”
California Deputy Attorney General Jane Reilley argued the rights of the state were infringed on when the Trump administration pulled 200 of her state’s National Guard soldiers “out of California and sent them across state lines to Portland over the objections of both states’ governors for no other reason than to contravene this court’s temporary restraining order.”
Those troops were set to be demobilized from federal service next week, but have since been ordered to remain under the president’s authority until February for a possible deployment to Portland, Reilley said.
The Trump administration countered that the president acted lawfully when he federalized the Oregon National Guard for a “federal protection mission.”
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton argued during opening statements that “agitators” have both used and threatened violence against federal law enforcement officers who work at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“The Department of Homeland Security cannot contain this threat itself,” Hamilton told Immergut, saying the president only federalized the Oregon National Guard after Gov. Tina Kotek refused to do so.
Hamilton said the president can federalize the guard when there’s a rebellion or threat of one, or if federal laws cannot be carried out, which he said is applicable in Portland.
“The president’s judgement is not subject to judicial review,” he argued, adding the president’s decision must reflect “the facts and law within a range of honest judgement.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
