A Trump-appointed judge didn't seem to fully buy arguments put forward by the Trump administration's Justice Department as to why the emergency deployment of National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, is justified.
No large-scale unrest or crime wave is currently underway in Portland, and the only incident that appears to have justified Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's move against the famously progressive city is a series of peaceful protests outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility south of downtown. Department of Homeland Security officials have described the demonstrators as "violent rioters," which is disputed by local witnesses.
According to Talking Points Memo, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut was "particularly stuck on the government’s struggle to identify recent events outside an ICE facility in the city to justify the occupation, as the Justice Department lawyers frequently pointed back to disruptions in June and July."
DOJ attorneys said that there were "some events" of unrest in June and July. Politico's Kyle Cheney noted she had "sharp questions" for the Trump administration.
“Some events? And that’s enough to call up the National Guard?” said Immergut, dismissing these incidents as "old news."
Lawyers for the government also argued that courts should defer to Trump's posts on Truth Social as official actions, which Immergut didn't seem to buy either. “Really? A social media post is going to count as a presidential determination that you can send the National Guard into cities? Is that really what I should be relying on as a determination?” she said.
Immergut, while being a Trump appointee, has ruled against GOP issues on previous occasions; in March, she upheld Oregon's high-capacity magazine restrictions, saying they did not violate the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.
The lawsuit challenging Trump's mobilization of the National Guard in Portland was initially assigned to Judge Michael Simon, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, but Simon recused himself on the basis that his wife, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, has publicly criticized the mobilization.
