Trump appeals trial loss over Portland troop deployment plan

Erik Larson, Bloomberg News on Nov 15, 2025

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The U.S. on Friday appealed a judge’s order that permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, to counter protests against his immigration crackdown.

The Justice Department seeks to overturn a Nov. 7 finding by a federal judge in Portland who held the first trial over Trump’s effort to deploy troops to Democratic-led cities. The judge, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, ruled the deployment was unlawful.

Oregon and the city of Portland, which Trump described as “war ravaged,” sued in September to block Trump’s planned deployment of 200 National Guard troops over the objection of the governor. Similar suits are underway over Trump’s deployments in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut ruled that the evidence at trial did not support Trump’s depiction of Portland, where protests started in June. She ruled the troops can remain under federal control during the appeal, but cannot be deployed.

“We must not normalize the use of military in our streets,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement about the appeal. “We will keep defending Oregon values and standing up for our state’s authority to make decisions grounded in evidence and common sense.”

Immergut in late October held the first trial on whether Trump properly invoked a rarely used federal law to bring state troops under federal control and deploy them to cities he claims are overrun by protesters and criminals.

Immergut determined that the protest situation in Portland didn’t meet the circumstances for deploying troops under the law, such as a rebellion or when federal law — in this case, immigration law — cannot be enforced with “regular forces.”

“While violent protests did occur in June, they quickly abated due to the efforts of civil law enforcement officers,” the judge said. “And since that brief span of a few days in June, the protests outside the Portland ICE facility have been predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence.”

The decision permanently blocks Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from implementing Hegseth’s Sept. 28 deployment orders for 200 Oregon guardsmen or his orders in October that could have been used to send troops to Portland from California and Texas.