On October 3, 2025, a federal courtroom in Portland, Oregon, became the latest front in the intensifying national debate over the limits of presidential power, state sovereignty, and the federal response to civil unrest. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, presided over a high-stakes hearing to determine whether President Donald Trump’s order to deploy approximately 200 federalized Oregon National Guard troops to Portland should be temporarily blocked. The decision—expected as soon as Friday evening or Saturday—could have sweeping implications for the balance of power between Washington and the states, as well as the future of protest policing in America.
The legal battle erupted after President Trump, through a series of social media posts the previous weekend, announced that Portland—a city he described as "war-ravaged" and "under siege" by "domestic terrorists"—would soon see a "surge" of federal resources, including National Guard troops. Trump asserted, “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” and the administration pointed to weeks-long demonstrations outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility as justification for the move. According to Trump and his officials, these protests had devolved into violent riots linked to Antifa, endangering federal property and personnel.
But Oregon and Portland officials saw things very differently. In a joint lawsuit filed earlier in the week, they challenged the president’s order as "patently unlawful" and an unconstitutional violation of state sovereignty. The state’s legal team argued that the president’s portrayal of Portland was “wildly hyperbolic,” and local leaders, including Governor Tina Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson, insisted the protests were predominantly peaceful and manageable by local law enforcement. “I cannot express the sadness and disappointment I feel when I hear the leader of our country call for the militarization of a situation that does not exist, with murky, unknown, and potentially deadly rules, and no clear definition of success or failure,” Mayor Wilson wrote in a TIME opinion piece.
Judge Immergut, opening the Friday hearing, noted that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had recently affirmed that federal judges have the authority to review presidential decisions to federalize the National Guard—but that such review must be “highly deferential” to executive power. Still, Immergut pressed Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys about the basis for the deployment. The key legal authority cited by the Trump administration was 10 U.S. Code 12406, an archaic statute that allows the president to mobilize the Guard in cases of foreign invasion, rebellion, or when federal laws cannot be executed by ordinary means.
Interestingly, the memo signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to federalize the Oregon Guard referenced not recent events in Portland, but a June executive order tied to unrest in Los Angeles. Immergut questioned whether it was appropriate to invoke a months-old, out-of-state incident to justify a current deployment in Oregon. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton responded that the statute does not require specific geographic limitations and that the president’s social media posts themselves—describing the conditions in Portland—should be seen as the operative rationale for action.
Hamilton argued, “10 U.S. Code 12406 doesn’t lay out a specific process or form the president has to follow or fill out to determine when a deployment is necessary,” and insisted that the president’s online statements reflected his decision-making. However, Oregon’s attorneys countered that this interpretation would render the statute virtually limitless, allowing the president and defense secretary to send troops anywhere in the country at any time, simply by citing unrest, even in unrelated locales. Senior Assistant Attorney Scott Kennedy warned that such a precedent “would threaten to change the balance of federal and state power.”
At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental disagreement about what’s actually happening on the ground in Portland. Federal officials have described a city under siege, with “vicious and cruel radicals” laying siege to the ICE facility, throwing incendiary devices, rocks, and bricks at law enforcement, and even following officers home. The facility, they note, was forced to close for three weeks over the summer “because of the violence.”
Local officials, however, paint a much calmer picture. Portland police testified that the demonstrations outside the ICE facility have been largely peaceful, typically involving only a handful of people gathering nightly. City attorney Caroline Turco summed up the dispute succinctly: “The president’s perception is it’s World War II out here. The reality is, it’s a beautiful city and a sophisticated police force that can handle the situation.”
The tension between perception and reality has been a recurring theme, with city leaders and Democratic politicians warning that the presence of the National Guard could inflame rather than quell unrest. Senator Jeff Merkley remarked, “The president has sent agents here to create chaos and riots here in Portland, to induce a reaction. To induce protests. To induce conflicts. His goal is to make Portland look as he was describing it as … Our job is to say, ‘We are not going to take the bait.’”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has threatened to cut federal funding to Portland, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declaring, “We will not fund states that allow anarchy.” The administration has also deployed federal resources to other Democratic-led cities, such as Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Memphis—moves that have drawn fierce opposition from local officials, who see them as politically motivated and lacking in legal justification.
Amid the legal wrangling, practical questions remain unresolved. The Oregon National Guard soldiers—about 200 in total—were undergoing civil disturbance training and were not expected to deploy to Portland until later in October. The DOJ confirmed that, despite an ongoing federal shutdown, the federal government would pay the troops, though the timing of those payments remained unclear. For now, the soldiers were still preparing at a facility nearly 100 miles from the protest site, learning crowd control, de-escalation, and use-of-force protocols.
The courtroom drama itself has had its twists. U.S. District Judge Michael Simon, initially assigned the case, recused himself on October 2 after DOJ officials raised concerns about his impartiality due to his marriage to Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat who had publicly criticized the deployment. Judge Immergut, who took over the case just hours before the hearing, emphasized the urgency of a decision, telling the parties, “I understand urgency,” but also indicated she needed time to review the complex legal and constitutional questions at play.
As the city waited for Immergut’s ruling, the scene outside the ICE facility remained tense. Demonstrations had intensified, and arrests—including that of conservative influencer Nick Sortor—had drawn national attention. Both sides of the political spectrum watched closely, with conservatives calling for law and order and progressives decrying what they see as federal overreach and a manufactured crisis.
Whatever Judge Immergut decides, the outcome is likely to reverberate far beyond Portland, setting a precedent for how—and when—the federal government can intervene in state affairs during times of protest and unrest. The eyes of the nation remain fixed on Oregon, where questions of law, order, and democracy itself hang in the balance.
