Judge blocks Trump National Guard deployment to Portland, citing lack of justification

U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut on Sunday temporarily extended an order blocking the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, saying the government failed to justify the move.

In an order issued Sunday evening, Immergut “preliminarily enjoins Defendant Secretary of Defense Hegseth from implementing” memorandums that authorized the federalization and deployment of National Guard members from Oregon, Texas and California into Portland. 

The injunction will remain in effect “until this Court issues its final opinion on the merits by Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, no later than 5 p.m.”

Immergut said that the court witnessed “three days of testimony and argument in a trial that ended 48 hours ago,” reviewing more than 750 exhibits, many of them voluminous. She wrote that “the interest of justice requires that this Court complete a thorough review of the exhibits and trial transcripts before issuing a final decision on the merits.”

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Ultimately, she assessed the Trump administration’s actions and found the government’s justification lacking.

“Based on the trial testimony, this Court finds no credible evidence that during the approximately two months before the President’s federalization order, 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,” she wrote. 

The judge further concluded that the president “likely did not have a colorable basis” to invoke either Section 12406(3) or Section 12406(2) to federalize and deploy the National Guard to Portland’s ICE facility. 

Immergut pointed to testimony from local law enforcement – officials who had firsthand knowledge of demonstrations – as key to her conclusion that the protests did not amount to a rebellion. 

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“Based on trial testimony that this Court found credible, particularly the testimony of Portland Police Bureau command staff, who work in Portland and have first-hand knowledge of the crowds at the ICE building from June to the present, the protests in Portland at the time of the National Guard call outs are likely not a ‘rebellion,’ and likely do not pose a danger of rebellion,” she wrote. 

Immergut also concluded that the administration’s actions likely violate statutory limits and constitutional protections.

The judge wrote that “Defendants’ federalization and deployment of the National Guard in response to protests outside a single federal building in Portland, Oregon, extended beyond delegated statutory authority under 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and violated the Tenth Amendment.” 

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She added that sending in troops from one state into another infringes on state sovereignty, describing it as “an injury to Oregon’s sovereignty under the Constitution, and Oregon’s equal sovereignty among the States.”

The judge said she expects to issue her final opinion on the merits by Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, by 5 p.m. PT. Until then, “the Oregon National Guard may remain federalized, but not deployed.”