The Justice Department is appealing a federal judge’s ruling Saturday that President Trump lacks the authority to deploy Oregon National Guard members to protect federal buildings in Portland.
“With all due respect to that judge, I think her opinion is untethered in reality and in the law,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of US District Judge Karin Immergut.
“The president is using his authority as commander in Chief, US Code § 12406, which clearly states that the president has the right to call up the National Guard in cases where he deems it’s appropriate,” Leavitt said.
“For more than 100 days, night after night after night, the ICE facility has really been under siege by these anarchists … the president wants to ensure that our federal buildings and our assets are protected,” she added.
Immergut, a Trump-appointee, ruled Saturday that deploying active-duty troops to Portland would violate the US Constitution and defy federal law barring military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
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She also argued that Trump’s order did not reflect the reality on the ground, describing the protests at an immigration processing facility in South Portland as “small and uneventful.”
“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” Immergut wrote in her ruling, which temporarily barred Trump from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland.
In a Sept. 27 Truth Social post, Trump described the city as “war ravaged” from the protests he claimed were being led by “Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”
After Immergut issued her order, Trump attempted to defy the court by deploying National Guard troops from California and Texas.
“It seems to me that based on the conduct of the defendants and the now seeking National Guard from Texas to go to Oregon again, I see those as direct contravention of the order that this were issued yesterday,” Immergut said during Sunday night hearing, where she blocked the administration from deploying Guardsman from any state into Portland.
Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration is “very confident that we will win on the merits of the law.”
The White House press secretary also pointed out that the San Francisco-based Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that Trump lawfully exercised his statutory authority when he took control of the California National Guard to deploy troops to Los Angeles amid anti-ICE protests and attacks against law enforcement.
