By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal judge in Oregon on Wednesday extended temporary restraining orders that block President Donald Trump’s administration from deploying any National Guard troops to police Portland as part of his campaign to dispatch military forces to a growing number of Democratic-led cities.
Portland-based U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut acted as the administration awaits a ruling from a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether it will lift one of her orders preventing the administration from implementing Trump’s plan.
Immergut, during a telephonic hearing, cited timing concerns in deciding that she should extend by another 14 days two orders she previously issued, which had been set to expire later this week, even as the parties await the 9th Circuit’s ruling.
The judge, who Trump appointed during his first term, had issued those orders on October 4 and October 5, first ruling Trump could not take over Oregon’s National Guard and then ruling that he could not circumvent that decision by calling in National Guard troops from other states.
She has scheduled a non-jury trial set to begin on October 29 to determine whether to impose a longer-term block, which Immergut on Wednesday said will turn on “what’s going on on the ground and whether it warrants the deployment that was ordered.”
Justice Department attorney Michael Gerardi during Wednesday’s hearing opposed Immergut extending her temporary restraining orders, which it wants dissolved. The White House had no immediate comment.
The National Guard serves as state-based militia forces that answer to state governors except when called into federal service by the president.
Trump on September 27 ordered 200 National Guard troops to Portland, continuing his administration’s unprecedented use of military personnel in U.S. cities to suppress protests and bolster domestic immigration enforcement. Trump called the city “war ravaged.”
City and state officials sued the administration in a bid to stop the Portland deployment, arguing Trump’s action violates several federal laws that govern the use of military forces and the state’s rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment.
Immergut in issuing her prior rulings said there was no evidence that recent protests in Portland rose to the level of a rebellion or seriously interfered with law enforcement. She said Trump’s description of the city as war-ravaged was “simply untethered to the facts.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chris Reese, Bill Berkrot and Alistair Bell)
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