Judge extends orders barring Trump from sending National Guard troops to Oregon

Sharon Bernstein, The Sacramento Bee on Oct 15, 2025

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The Trump administration was barred from using federalized National Guard troops from Oregon or other states to conduct operations in Portland for another two weeks under a ruling issued Wednesday by a federal judge.

U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut extended two temporary restraining orders against President Donald Trump’s effort to send the Guard to the liberal city after a hearing on Wednesday.

The orders are part of an ongoing legal fight between the Trump administration and the Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Illinois testing the power of the president to take control of Guard troops over the objections of a state’s leaders. Trump first federalized the California Guard last June, arguing in court that the troops were needed to protect immigration enforcement officers as they conducted sweeps in Los Angeles.

Trump took control of the Oregon Guard on Sept. 28. after declaring in a post on his social media platform that Portland was “war-ravaged” and that domestic terrorists had attacked facilities operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Citing a federal law that allows the president to take control of a state’s Guard if, among other reasons, he is unable to enforce the laws of the country with regular forces, Trump activated 200 soldiers.

But the state of Oregon sued in federal court, saying the president had cited “nothing more than baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext” to send troops to Portland.

Immergut, a Trump appointee, agreed, and on Oct. 4 issued a temporary restraining order that barred the administration from federalizing or deploying the Guard in Portland.

Trump then moved to send California Guard troops, who were already under his control, to the artsy Northwest city, prompting Immergut to issue a second order blocking the deployment of troops from other states as well. When Illinois’ Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, objected to the president’s plan to send that state’s Guard to Chicago, Trump moved to send troops to the region from Texas with the cooperation of that state’s Republican governor, prompting another ban by another federal judge.

In a complicated sequence of competing legal rulings in the Oregon case, Immergut’s first order was appealed by the president, who said Immergut’s rulings were “unprecedented” and infringed on power given to the president by law. A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet ruled on whether that order should be fully overturned, but did issue an administrative stay preventing it from being enforced for now.

But Trump remained barred from sending in the Guard, including federalized troops from California, by Immergut’s second order, which was still in effect and had not been appealed by late Wednesday.

That left the parties in a stalemate while court proceedings continued. The Oregon Guard was in the greater Portland area, but was not conducting missions, U.S. Northern Command said in an Oct. 8 statement.

If the 9th Circuit panel issues a more formal ruling overturning Immergut’s first temporary restraining order, the administration is likely to ask the judge to nullify the second one.

In the meantime, because her initial orders were set to last only two weeks, Immergut on Wednesday faced the question of whether to extend them.

She did so Wednesday afternoon, also setting Oct. 29 as the date for a bench trial in her court to consider the broader legal issues raised by the state of Oregon’s lawsuit.

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