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U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut issued an order Friday permanently blocking President Donald Trump from sending National Guard soldiers to Oregon against the wishes of state and local leaders, the Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported.
Immergut, a Trump appointee, ruled that Trump’s justification for the attempted late September deployment, that protests outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility did not constitute a “rebellion” against the federal government, was unfounded. Trump administration lawyers have said they would appeal any Immergut decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Immergut had earlier issued a preliminary decision Nov. 2 that found the federal government violated Title 10 of the U.S. Code and the 10th amendment by federalizing and attempting to deploy Oregon, Texas and California National Guard troops to Portland over the objections of state and local leaders and California’s governor.
Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Meanwhile, the roughly 400 currently federalized Oregon and California Guard troops sitting in waiting since early October at two military camps in Oregon will remain federalized but cannot be deployed.
The 9th Circuit is also reviewing a decision by two of its members to overturn Immergut’s initial order that blocked the federal government from deploying troops.
It’s been just more than a month since President Donald Trump announced on social media that he would deploy troops to “war ravaged” Portland. Since then, he has federalized and attempted to deploy hundreds of National Guard from Oregon, California and Texas to Portland.
In her Nov. 2 decision, Immergut found Trump’s decision was not based on a “colorable assessment of the facts” or within a “range of honest judgement.”
“Defendants’ federalization and deployment of the Oregon National Guard commandeered these State officers to enforce a federal law enforcement program at the Portland ICE Facility, in violation of the Tenth Amendment,” she wrote.
She also found that federal lawyers didn’t provide evidence to support their argument that 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,” in the two months leading up to Trump’s federalization order.
“The violence that did occur during this time period predominately involved violence between protesters and counter- protesters, not violence against federal officers or the ICE facility,” she wrote.
A related case involving Trump’s attempted deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois is sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court’s expedited schedule, or “shadow docket,” and a decision won’t be reached until at least Nov. 17, according to the court’s most recent request for briefs.
By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle