A federal, Trump-appointed judge granted Portland’s request for temporary protection from imminent National Guard occupation Saturday night.
Judge Karin Immergut wrote that some of the Trump administration’s arguments risk disrupting the basic premise that the United States is a country of “Constitutional law, not martial law.”
“Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation,” she wrote.
The Trump administration immediately appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Immergut on Friday seemed poised to grant the temporary restraining order, as the administration’s lawyers struggled mightily during oral arguments to point to recent unrest in Portland that would justify the deployment.
“As of September 27, 2025, it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in Portland,” she wrote.
She added that law enforcement had managed what sporadic episodes there were outside an ICE facility that had been the site of larger protests earlier in the summer. She also dismissed the administration’s arguments that violence elsewhere — Justice Department lawyers had cited the killing of ICE detainees in Dallas — heightened the risk of violence in Portland specifically.
The DOJ’s argument that Portland’s occasional use of other types of federal troops as backup demonstrated that local law enforcement was unable to cope similarly didn’t pass muster: “If the President could equate diversion of federal resources with his inability to execute federal law, then the President could send military troops virtually anywhere at any time,” she said.
She also wrote that President Trump’s own words hurt his case, as his hyperbolic descriptions of Portland as war-ravaged and burning showed that his “determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
The same day that Immergut handed down her ruling, Trump announced that he would deploy 300 National Guard troops to Chicago. That occupation is opposed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) — who called the deployment “outrageous and un-American” — and will also likely be met with legal challenges.
Read the ruling here:
