Left: Karin Immergut listens during her Senate confirmation hearing on Oct. 24, 2018 (C-Span). Right: President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Following a brief trial, a federal judge renewed a block of the Trump administration”s efforts to federalize and deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, finding that even affording President Donald Trump a “great level of deference” did not override “credible evidence” that there likely was “no lawful basis” for that action.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, wrote Sunday that there was simply a mismatch between the president’s determinations and the facts on the ground as to the level of threat that protests outside the Portland ICE facility posed to federal property and federal officers.
“Applying ‘a great level of deference to the President’s determination that a predicate condition exists,’ this Court nonetheless concludes that the President’s invocation of Section 12406 was likely not made ‘in the face of the emergency and directly related to the quelling of the disorder or the prevention of its continuance,'” the judge said, noting that the unrest was at its apex in June, three months before Trump federalized the National Guard. “Critically, the credible evidence at trial established that following a few days in June, which involved the high watermark of violence and unlawful activity outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) building in Portland, Oregon, the protests outside the ICE facility between June 15 and September 27, 2025, were generally uneventful with occasional interference to federal personnel and property.”
Adding that a supposedly overrun and under siege high-ranking Federal Protective Service (FPS) official was “surprised to learn” about the deployment, and testified at trial that “neither he, nor the regional director of the FPS Region, made that request,” Immergut said Trump “likely did not have a ‘colorable basis'” to invoke 10 U.S. Code § 12406, a statute that authorizes the president to call up the guard when he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
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“The trial testimony produced no credible evidence of any significant damage to the ICE facility in the months before the President’s callout and no credible evidence that ICE was unable to execute immigration laws. Protesters frequently blocked the driveway of the ICE building, but the evidence also showed that federal law enforcement officers were able to clear the driveway,” the judge said.
The ruling came days after the DOJ told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that it regretted “incorrect” representations that “nearly 25%” of FPS officers nationwide had to be redeployed in response to protests in Portland starting in June.
During early October oral arguments at the 9th Circuit, Oregon identified another basic inaccuracy, one expressed by Trump in a Truth Social post saying Portland was “war ravaged” or “under siege.”
Immergut did not use these words in her latest order, but she did find, as she did earlier in the case, that “sporadic violence against federal officers and property damage to” an ICE facility amid protests was not an organized “rebellion against the authority of the government” or an “attempt to overthrow the government as a whole.”
“This Court finds that Defendants’ federalization and deployment of the National Guard in response to protests outside a single federal building in Portland, Oregon, ‘extend[ed] beyond delegated statutory authority’ under 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and violated the Tenth Amendment,” the judge said, granting a preliminary injunction blocking Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from federalizing and deploying Oregon’s National Guard until 5 p.m. on Friday, by which time she intends to issue a “final opinion on the merits.”
