Trump Sends California Guard to Oregon After Court Setback (3)

President Donald Trump’s clash with Oregon escalated after about 100 California National Guard members were deployed to the Pacific Northwest state, despite a court order holding that isolated protests in Portland did not justify the use of federalized troops.

The troops arrived Saturday night with no prior notice to state officials, and more troops are on the way, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek said in a statement Sunday.

Oregon officials said they were going to return to federal court Monday because the 14-day restraining order from US District Judge Karin Immergut only stopped the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops. The state’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said in a news conference that California was joining Oregon’s lawsuit to stop the deployment of the California Guard.

Troops were ordered to Illinois in a similar manner.

Rayfield and Kotek told reporters they hoped US District Judge Karin Immergut would rule Monday on their request, which is the same day the Trump administration is appealing her Saturday ruling.

“The president is trying to out-hustle us” in this process, Rayfield said.

The Trump administration has said that federalized troops are needed to protect immigration officers from protesters in Democratic-run cities, even as local officials said demonstrations have been modest and largely peaceful.

At the direction of Trump, about 200 federalized members of the California National Guard are being reassigned to Portland to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal personnel performing official duties, according to Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

“There is no need for military intervention in Oregon,” Kotek said in the statement. “There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. Oregon is our home, not a military target.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed for a temporary restraining order that sought to bar the deployment of what he said were 300 of the state’s Guard troops to Oregon, according to a statement from his office on Sunday night.

“This is a blatant and disrespectful ploy to do an end run around yesterday’s order by a district court blocking the illegal federalization of the Oregon National Guard,” Bonta said in the statement.

The move marks another dramatic escalation in Trump’s campaign to federalize law enforcement in Democratic cities, with his administration now trying to find ways around federal court orders. Trump has already deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Memphis, with varying goals of protecting federal property and fighting crime.

Federal law enforcement officers clash with protesters outside an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 4.

Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Protests in Portland began in June when ICE agents started arresting undocumented immigrants as they appeared in court for procedural hearings. The sporadic protests have focused on a single ICE facility outside downtown, a far cry from the often violent protests that rocked Portland during social-justice protests in 2020.

Nevertheless, Trump called Portland “war-ravaged” and said Sunday the city was “burning to the ground.”

Kotek countered that description on Sunday, noting that the protest was confined to one city block and that the Portland Marathon had occurred that day.

“Thousands of people running 26 miles through the streets of Portland — clearly not a war zone,” she said. “We cannot normalize the approach he is taking with the military in our country.”

The deployment of California troops to Oregon came hours after a Trump-appointed federal judge in Portland issued a strongly worded court order temporarily blocking the administration’s plan to call up 200 Oregon National Guard members to the state’s largest city.

Immergut concluded there was no justification for the deployment. She cited the limited nature of the protests and the ability of local law enforcement to handle the situation, which typically involved about 20 protesters at a time in recent weeks. The judge also said that the deployment risks “blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm the deployment, but spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement on Sunday that the federal government expects to win its appeal of the Portland judge’s order.

“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement,” Jackson said. California Governor Gavin Newsom, she said, “should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country.”

Rayfield said Trump is falsely portraying Portland as a war zone to justify sending in federalized troops.

“This president is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” Rayfield said earlier in a statement. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”

Newsom has already clashed with the administration over Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard in June in Los Angeles.

“Despite a federal court order finding no legal basis to deploy state National Guard troops to the streets of Portland and ordering that control of the Oregon National Guard be returned to state command, the Trump administration is now sending 300 federally controlled members of the California National Guard to Portland to take their place,” Newsom said in a statement.

Federal law enforcement officers deploy smoke outside during clashes with protesters in Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 4.

Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The judge said there were no facts to support Trump’s claims that Portland was “war-ravaged” and that anarchists and professional agitators were trying to burn down federal property and other buildings.

“The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote.

Immergut agreed that courts should give great deference to the president in making such decisions, but she disagreed that Trump had made his determination about Portland in good faith and ruled that deference “is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.”

Read More: Judge Blocks Trump Oregon Plan as Guards Ordered to Illinois

Trump also ordered 300 National Guard troops to Illinois on Saturday on a similar rationale, over the objections of Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, who called the move “un-American.”

Illinois received no prior notice from the White House about the deployment, said a Pritzker spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity. The spokesperson added that the Illinois National Guard informed the Pentagon that the situation does not require the use of the military and reiterated its objection to the deployment.

The California National Guard was federalized in June for 90 days, when Trump first started using military troops to help combat what he claims is high crime and to protect federal agents carrying out his deportation actions. Trump was attempting to federalize the California Guard for another 90 days, according to the California Department of Justice.

The Memphis deployment was conducted with the agreement of Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.

(Updates with Pentagon comment and court filing from California from paragraph 10.)

--With assistance from Catherine Lucey, Felipe Marques, Miranda Davis and Jon Herskovitz.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Wendy Benjaminson in Washington at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net

Wendy Benjaminson

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