A federal judge had blocked Trump Administration from dispatching Guard troops to Portland

A protester waves a flag outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on September 27 in Portland, Oregon. Photo / Getty Images

A United States federal appeals court said today that it would allow US President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, blocking a judge’s ruling that forbade his Administration from sending troops into the city.

The decision from a panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit authorises, for now, Trump’s efforts to place the military in Oregon’s largest city, one of several places where he has sent troops or vowed to do so, including Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Chicago.

A federal judge in Chicago has blocked for now Trump’s push to send troops into that city, saying she had found a “lack of credibility” in federal officials’ contentions in the case.

Announcing her decision from the bench, US District Judge April Perry said deploying the National Guard was “likely to lead to civil unrest”. The Trump Administration is asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in that case.

Perry reached her decision after holding a hearing in that case.

In another hearing held at the same time, the three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments about the Portland deployment and whether to allow it to proceed.

After Oregon officials sued to challenge the Portland deployment, US District Judge Karin Immergut, whom Trump appointed to the Bench during his first term, blocked him from sending the Oregon National Guard into Portland.

The Trump Administration pivoted to send California National Guard members into Portland. Immergut then issued a second order, blocking the Administration from sending troops into Oregon.

During the arguments before the Ninth Circuit, officials representing the Trump Administration and Oregon offered duelling portraits of whether the Portland deployments were lawful.

One significant focus in the hearing was protests that have occurred for weeks at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland.

The Trump Administration has written in court papers that the facility was “the target of actual and threatened violence”, describing the troop deployment as needed to protect federal officials and property.

Oregon officials, though, said that the protests have significantly declined since the northern summer.

By the time Trump announced the Portland deployment late last month, they wrote in court filings, “the protesters’ activities have not necessitated any arrests for months”.

Immergut, in her ruling, echoed Oregon officials’ conclusions.

While there were violent protests at the Ice facility in June, she wrote, by the time of Trump’s attempted deployment, the demonstrations “were generally peaceful in nature with only sporadic incidents of violence and disruptive behaviour”.

During the hearing before the circuit court, Eric McArthur, a Justice Department lawyer, said Immergut erred in considering the situation in Portland only during the days and weeks before Trump’s deployment.

McArthur said the Trump Administration had sent in federal law enforcement officials to help quell the unrest but described this as unsustainable given limited resources.

As a result, he said, Trump called in the National Guard.

Stacy Chaffin, an assistant Oregon attorney-general, said there was a significant difference between the situation around the Ice facility in June and in September, when Trump moved to dispatch troops to Portland.

She urged the judges “to look at the circumstances around when that happened”.

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