President Donald Trump was permanently blocked from sending the National Guard to Portland by U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, who delivered her final order in the case Friday.
The case has centered around whether ongoing protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in the city warrant a National Guard deployment. In her ruling, she acknowledged “violent protests did occur,” but law enforcement was able to address them.
“Since that brief span of a few days in June, the protests outside the Portland ICE facility have been predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence, largely between protesters and counter-protesters,” the judge wrote in her 106-page order, “this Court concludes that even giving great deference to the President’s determination, the President did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard.”
The permanent injunction went into effect immediately.
The decision is a setback in the Trump administration’s effort to send National Guard members to the city, and marks the fourth time the judge has blocked the deployment.
The city of Portland and the states of Oregon and California sued in late September after President Trump announced on social media he would “provide all necessary Troops” to protect the city he described as “War ravaged” and “under siege.”
Federal law allows the president to federalize the National Guard under certain situations, such as a rebellion or threat of one, or an inability to execute laws.
After temporarily blocking the president from deploying guard troops twice, Immergut held a trial on the underlying lawsuit last week. Over the course of three days, the city and states argued the executive branch exceeded its constitutional authority and violated state sovereignty. They’ve also said the conditions on the ground in Portland do not warrant the deployment and can be handled by local law enforcement.
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice disagreed, pointing to the arrest of several protesters throughout the summer and disruptions to federal immigration operations. They’ve maintained the president has sweeping authority to deploy the National Guard to protect federal functions.
“President Trump’s federalization decision is consistent with law,” Eric Hamilton, with the Justice Department, argued during the trial. “The president’s judgement is not subject to judicial review.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
A previous lawsuit in California, after guard members and U.S. Marines were sent there in June, primarily challenged the activities the guard members were performing, such as police work. Oregon’s case is the first since Trump took office to go to trial over the lawfulness of federalizing the National Guard in the first place.
“To be clear, today this Court does not rule that the President can never deploy the National Guard to Oregon, or to any other location, if conditions on the ground justify the Guard’s intervention,” Immergut noted in her ruling Friday.
Jeff Feldman, a law professor at the University of Washington, said Immergut’s decision will likely be appealed and will go to a three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“She gets credit for putting it on a fast track and getting on this very quickly,” Feldman said of Immergut’s trial.
Democratic political leaders involved in the case said the ruling marked an important moment as President Trump has pushed National Guard deployments in other places, such as Los Angeles and Chicago.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield called the permanent injunction a check on presidential power.
“No president is above the law, all of us, in every city across this country must follow the law,” he said in a video message Friday night. “There’s a reason we have laws in place. And there’s a reason we don’t normalize the use of the military in our cities.”
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said the city would continue its fight in court.
“As I have said from the beginning, the number of federal troops needed in our city is zero, and today’s court ruling vindicates Portland’s position while reaffirming the rule of law that protects our community,” the mayor said in a statement.
Like Wilson, California Attorney General Rob Bonta indicated he too was preparing for an appeal and said the legal fight was not over.
“Once again, a court has firmly rejected the President’s militarized vision for America’s future,” Bonta said in a statement Friday. “We must not become desensitized to the unprecedented and blatantly illegal nature of the President’s actions.”
Oct. 4 deployment
In the six weeks since the lawsuit was filed, Oregonians have been subject to a ping-pong of court decisions and revelations. The most notable: National Guard troops were briefly deployed to the Portland ICE building in early October.
On Oct. 3, for the first time, Immergut heard arguments for and against a temporary restraining order to block the president from federalizing 200 members of the Oregon National Guard.
The following morning, a small group of Oregon National Guard members was ordered to the ICE building, according to emails submitted as part of the trial.
While troops were still at the facility, Immergut issued a 31-page decision blocking the Trump administration from federalizing the state’s guard in the first place. The nine troops remained at the building until their shift concluded at midnight.
During trial, attorneys for the Trump administration twice told Immergut various explanations, including that it took time communicate the message to people on the ground that her temporary restraining order had gone into effect.
In her Friday ruling, the judge questioned that explanation, stating she was “deeply troubled” the Trump administration kept members of the Oregon National Guard at the Portland ICE facility “in violation” of the first temporary restraining order.
Immergut noted the Trump administration responded to her initial order by quickly sending 200 California National Guard members, who were already under the president’s authority, to Oregon. After that, they called up hundreds of Texas National Guard troops.
“In other words, 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,” she wrote Friday.
On the evening of Oct. 5, Immergut held an emergency hearing and issued a second temporary restraining order. That one was broader and temporarily blocked any federalized members from any national guard from deploying to Oregon.
Correcting the record
As the case wound its way to trial, the Trump administration also found it had to correct the record, walking back a core assertion they used to justify the need to bring National Guard troops to Portland.
Initially, Department of Homeland Security officials told the courts the agency sent 115 officers from the Federal Protective Service (FPS), an agency responsible for securing federal property, to the city.
Attorneys for the Trump administration initially claimed “nearly a quarter of the agency’s entire FPS capacity had to be redirected over a relatively short period to a single location in one medium-sized American city due to the unrest there.”
That turned out to be wrong, according to court documents filed on the eve of trial.
“The number of individual officers who deployed to Portland as of September 30, 2025, is approximately 86, not 115,” Robert Cantu, a regional deputy director with the Federal Protective Service, stated in a corrected declaration with the court.
The city and states argued in their own court filings that the FPS “moved only a small fraction” of the agency’s more than 1,300 employees, “to Portland to supplement the four officers assigned to the Portland ICE facility, and never more than 31 at a time.”
Law enforcement officers from ICE and Customs and Border Protection were also sent to Portland to assist at the immigration facility.
“In sum, the trial record showed that although protests outside the Portland ICE building occurred nightly between June and October 2025, ever since a few particularly disruptive days in mid-June, protests have remained peaceful with only isolated and sporadic instances of violence,” Immergut wrote in her Friday ruling.
“The occasional interference to federal officers has been minimal, and there is no evidence that these small-scale protests have significantly impeded the execution of any immigration laws.”
