By Dietrich Knauth and Phil Stewart
(Reuters) -A federal judge in Oregon on Sunday temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s administration from sending any National Guard troops to police Portland, Oregon, a setback for the president as he seeks to dispatch the military to cities over the objections of their Democratic leaders.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut followed the Trump administration’s decision to call in troops from California and Texas just one day after she temporarily blocked Trump from deploying 200 Oregon National Guard troops to Portland.
Immergut said there was no evidence that recent protests necessitated the presence of National Guard troops, no matter where they came from.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the (decision) I issued yesterday?” Immergut asked a Trump administration lawyer during a hearing on Sunday night.
Immergut’s ruling on Sunday, which will remain in effect until at least October 19, means the Trump administration would be blocked from sending any National Guard troops to Portland while Oregon and California seek a longer-term ruling in court.
There was no immediate comment from the White House or from the Pentagon on the judge’s order.
The Pentagon said earlier on Sunday it was sending 200 California National Guard troops to Oregon to “support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal personnel performing official duties, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”
National Guard troops are state-based militia forces that answer to their governors except when called into federal service. Trump has said their deployment in Portland is necessary to respond to protests at an immigration facility in the city.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said before the judge’s order that the troops were already on their way to Portland.
“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power. The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself,” Newsom said in a post on X.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from using U.S. troops in California to fight crime on September 2, but that ruling is on hold while the administration appeals. As a result, the Guard troops headed to Oregon remain federalized and under Trump’s command.
LOCAL OBJECTIONS
The attempted Oregon deployment is the latest example of Trump’s expanding use of the U.S. military in his second term, which has included deploying troops along the U.S. border and ordering them to kill suspected drug traffickers on boats off Venezuela.
National Guard troops have been deployed to police Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and Trump has said he would send troops to several other cities, regardless of objections from local government officials.
On Sunday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said Trump was ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard to cities in Illinois, Oregon and other cities. Pritzker called on the Texas governor to refuse to coordinate with the order.
Oregon and Portland challenged Trump’s efforts to federalize its National Guard, saying Trump was exaggerating the threat of protests against his immigration policies to justify illegally seizing control of state units.
They argued that Trump’s deployment violated several federal laws and the state’s sovereign right to police its own citizens.
Speaking to reporters at the White House earlier on Sunday, Trump repeated his characterization of Portland as a city overrun by lawlessness. “You have agitators, insurrectionists,” he said.
Immergut, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, said in her ruling on Saturday that although the president must be given “a great level of deference” in military decisions, he cannot ignore the facts on the ground.
Accepting Trump’s legal arguments would mean that he could “send military troops virtually anywhere at any time” and “risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power – to the detriment of this nation,” she added.
Trump said on Sunday he did not know which judge issued Saturday’s ruling, but that he was not “served well” by those who advised him to make the appointment in his first term. “That judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump said of Immergut, mistaking her gender.
The Trump administration on Sunday appealed Immergut’s decision on the Oregon troops, arguing that the Supreme Court decided 200 years ago that Congress gave the decision on whether to call up National Guard troops to the president.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York; Phil Stewart and Leah Douglas in Washington; additional reporting by Brad Brooks and Julia Harte; Writing by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Sergio Non, Richard Chang, Lincoln Feast and Alexia Garamfalvi)
