Federal Judge Stops Trump’s Second Attempt To Send National Guard Troops to Portland

The Trump-appointed judge’s ruling halts troop deployments from California and Texas, as governors accuse the White House of creating ‘war zone’ conditions.

AP/Jenny Kane
Law enforcement officers stand in tear gas outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during a protest on October 4, 2025, at Portland, Oregon. AP/Jenny Kane

A federal judge in Oregon is blocking President Trump and his plan to send National Guard troops from Texas and California to Portland after the same court denied the administration from sending the state’s own troops to the city.

Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, issued the ruling on Sunday, just after the Pentagon announced that 200 California National Guard members had been redeployed to Portland to assist United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officials in carrying out their duties. 

She said during an emergency hearing  that there was no evidence that recent protests in the city did not warrant the presence of federalized troops and deploying military forces to suppress unrest without Oregon’s approval threatened the state’s sovereignty.

The ruling will remain in effect until October 19.

On Saturday, Judge Immergut had blocked the Trump Administration from deploying 300 Oregon National Guard troops for being deployed to Oregon.

Mr. Trump and his top aides have raged against the first ruling. On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump did not rule out defying that order, telling reporters that he hadn’t “seen” her ruling yet, though he said she should be “ashamed” of herself.

The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, made clear on Saturday that he does not see the order as legitimate. Only the president, he said, can dictate the actions of the American military — even if it is a state’s national guard. He called the ruling “legal insurrection.”

“The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge,” he wrote on X on Saturday. He described protests against ICE as “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers.”

Ahead of the White House’s planned federalization of the Illinois National Guard, Governor JB Pritzker says his hometown is being turned into a “war zone” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — not by protesters. If the president does federalize the national guard in Illinois, he could run into legal challenges as he has in other states.

“This judge is a Trump-appointed judge,” Mr. Pritzker said of Judge Immergut during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

 “What the government is doing — what Trump is doing — is untethered from the facts. They’re just making this up, and then what do they do? They fire tear gas and smoke grenades and they make it look like it’s a war zone,” he added. “People on the ground are, frankly, incited to want to do something about it.”

Mr. Pritzker said the Trump administration is clueless about using law enforcement in Chicago. He pointed to the recent raid on an apartment complex that saw more than 100 people removed from their homes in the middle of the night — some of them U.S. citizens — as an example of why Mr. Trump needs to de-escalate. 

“They are the ones that are making it a war zone. They need to get out of Chicago if they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst,” Mr. Pritzker said.  

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said Sunday he is suing the Trump administration to block its efforts to deploy troops from that state’s National Guard to Portland.

The “deployment of the California National Guard to Oregon isn’t about crime,” Mr. Newsom said. “It’s about power. He is using our military as political pawns to build up his own ego. It’s appalling. It’s un-American. And it must stop.”


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