Appeals Court ruling allows Trump to deploy National Guard troops to Portland

The Trump administration can proceed with deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, under a ruling issued Monday. by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which rejected a lower court’s assertion that protests in the city were largely peaceful and under control.

The appellate ruling lifted a temporary block on the deployment of Oregon troops by Judge Karin J. Immergut of the federal district court in Oregon. It was not immediately clear whether the order also allows President Trump to use National Guard troops from other states, as he has suggested.

Lawyers for Oregon and the city of Portland immediately asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for an “en banc” rehearing, an appeal before the circuit’s chief judge and 10 randomly selected judges. And on Monday afternoon, a Ninth Circuit judge called for a vote among the active members of the appeals court on whether to hold an en banc hearing. Lawyers for both sides have until midnight Wednesday to file their arguments.

For now, a second temporary restraining order issued by Judge Immergut, which targeted all federalized National Guard troops, not just those in Oregon, is still in effect, but probably not for long. The Ninth Circuit judges wrote in their order that they believe the two restraining orders “rise and fall together,” and federal lawyers asked Judge Immergut late Monday to suspend or remove the second.

So Monday’s decision opened the door to stationing some federal troops at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in South Portland, the scene of street protests since June.

“Some of these protests have been peaceful, but many have turned violent and protesters have threatened federal law enforcement and the building,” wrote Judges Bridget Bade and Ryan Nelson, both Mr. Trump’s nominees, who painted Portland as a city in chaos.

The justices then cited a number of cases in which protesters in Portland attempted to start fires in the building, threw rocks and sticks, threatened officers with knives, shined lights in officers’ eyes and fired paintballs at officers.

“Even if the President may exaggerate the magnitude of the problem on social media, that does not change the fact that other facts provide a colorable basis” to support his decision to use National Guard troops, the judges wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Susan P. Graber, President Bill Clinton’s nominee, took issue with her colleagues’ characterization of the situation in Portland.

She wrote that “today’s decision is not only absurd, it undermines fundamental constitutional principles,” including state control of the National Guard and the First Amendment’s right to assemble and protest.

A September memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Guard troops could be stationed wherever protests “are occurring or are likely to occur” and could accompany federal agents implementing Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda on the ground.

The memo came a day after a social media post from Mr. Trump saying he would send “all necessary troops” “to protect war-ravaged Portland from “domestic terrorists.”

Such inflammatory descriptions do not reflect the reality in Portland, Judge Immergut wrote, and are inconsistent with law enforcement’s own assessments of protest activity. But that hasn’t stopped the president and other officials from misrepresenting the situation in Portland and other Democratic-run cities where he wants to send federal forces.

Much of the litigation over its deployment efforts in Portland and the Chicago area has centered on whether the Trump administration’s accounts of violence during anti-ICE protests were accurate. The dispute has also centered on whether there is a basis for invoking a federal law authorizing the president to deploy the Guard in the event of “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or whether the president is incapable of executing U.S. law.

In a preliminary ruling, Judge Immergut, who was also appointed to the bench by Mr. Trump, found that while there had been some “violent behavior,” including the construction of a “makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials,” most of those acts had occurred months ago, and none of them constituted rebellion.

But Justices Nelson and Bade distinguished their ruling from a recent decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked a similar deployment in Chicago. In Portland, they noted, federal officials said they were forced to close ICE facilities for three weeks in June because of protests. In Broadview, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, ICE facilities remained open despite protests.

“This decision has proven us right,” said Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, who visited Portland earlier this month, accompanied by conservative influencers, to try to underscore the administration’s narrative of a city spiraling out of control.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek called the administration’s continued efforts to deploy troops to her state’s largest city a “gross, un-American abuse of power.”

With National Guard deployments already underway in Washington, D.C. and, to a limited extent, Memphis, Tennessee, the legal battle over a deployment to Portland has significant ramifications. The promise of administering small deployments for short durations has not yet materialized.

A new filing by the District of Columbia attorney general in a federal lawsuit challenging the presence of thousands of National Guard troops in the capital cited recently obtained emails suggesting troops would be deployed to Washington at least until the summer of 2026. The suit claims that members of the National Guard, which Mr. Trump began deploying to Washington in early August, were involved in local law enforcement activities – and were trained in handcuffing and other civilian policing activities. technical — in violation of federal law.

Troop deployments in Illinois have remained blocked by lower court rulings, but that could change now that the administration has asked the Supreme Court for emergency intervention. In their filings, administration lawyers argue that courts do not have the authority to review Mr. Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard.

In a response Monday, Illinois lawyers argued that giving the executive branch such broad authority would be a misinterpretation of precedent and that an “unnecessary deployment” of troops would “increase tensions and undermine the ordinary law enforcement activities of the state and local entities.”

“No protest activity in Illinois has rendered the President incapable of executing federal law,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and lawyers for the city of Chicago told the judges.

Monday The Ninth Circuit’s decision is unlikely to be the final word in the dispute over Portland’s deployment. In addition to Oregon and Portland’s request for a broader hearing by the Ninth Circuit judges, Judge Immergut scheduled trial on the entire lawsuit filed by the state and city for October 29.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement that Monday’s ruling “would give the president unilateral authority to put Oregon troopers on our streets with almost no justification.”

“We are on a dangerous path in America,” he said.

Campbell Robertson reports contributed.