Trump Presses Ahead with Plans to Send Troops to Portland despite Court Setback

The Washington Post

13:46 JST, October 6, 2025

State officials pledged Sunday to fight the Trump administration in court over its efforts to send troops into Democratic-led cities, after a weekend of heated confrontations between protesters and federal agents in Chicago and Portland led to multiple arrests.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said his state would sue over President Donald Trump’s plans to deploy hundreds of California National Guard troops to Portland, after a judge late Saturday temporarily blocked the administration from sending Oregon’s National Guard into that city. The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that Trump ordered about 200 National Guard members to be reassigned from California.

“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” Newsom said in a statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield (D) said the state is preparing to expand its legal effort to include fighting deployments from out of state, accusing the president of being “hellbent” on using the military “absent the facts or authority to do so.”

“It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable,” Rayfield said on X.

The Trump administration, which has said troops are needed to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and agents conducting operations, has appealed the restraining order in Portland, where U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut sided with Oregon Democrats, who argued the troops are unnecessary.

A Trump appointee confirmed to the bench in 2019, Immergut wrote she expected a trial court to agree that the president exceeded his constitutional authority in mobilizing federal troops for local work and probably violated the 10th Amendment.

Trump on Saturday also authorized the activation of 300 National Guard troops to Chicago against the wishes of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), who has also said he would sue.

The developments mark a significant escalation as the Trump administration presses ahead with its push to increase deportations amid clashes between immigration authorities and angry residents – and over objections from states and setbacks in court.

Immergut said Trump had not met the standard to call up troops and pointed to “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days – or even weeks – leading up to the President’s directive,” prompting White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to accuse the judge of “legal insurrection.”

In Portland, federal law enforcement on Saturday night forced protesters away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Officers in military-style attire, with helmets and respirators, fired pepper balls into the crowd and deployed canisters of chemical irritants, engulfing apartment buildings in white smoke and leaving protesters and passersby coughing and crying.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to allow it to federalize the 200 Oregon National Guard troops while appeals make their way through the courts. Oregon responded by asking the appeals court to keep the temporary restraining order in place.

Tensions also spiked Saturday in Chicago when an armed agent shot and injured a female motorist. Trump officials said the agent fired “defensive shots” at a female motorist after officers’ vehicles were rammed and boxed in by several drivers in a southwest Chicago neighborhood. Separately, six people were arrested Saturday outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, just west of Chicago, according to the Illinois State Police.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin characterized the shooting incident as a response to an “ambush” carried out by “domestic terrorists” who also threw gas, rocks and bottles at law enforcement. Law enforcement alleged that the female motorist, later identified by federal officials as Marimar Martinez, was armed with a semiautomatic weapon. She was shot and wounded but drove away from the scene and was later treated at a hospital and taken into FBI custody.

Charging documents filed Sunday against Martinez and a man, Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, did not mention a weapon belonging to either. They were accused of using deadly weapons – their vehicles – to assault and impede federal officers.

Pritzker told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that his office had not been able to verify the initial account and was seeking more information. He accused the Trump administration of misrepresenting what led up to a deadly shooting of a Chicago man by federal immigration officers last month and questioned the department’s account. “They won’t let us access the facts. They are just putting out their propaganda,” Pritzker said.

Pritzker said that Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and others were misrepresenting Chicago and Democratic-run cities as urban war zones in need of rescue, arguing that it is federal agents who are sowing chaos.

“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Pritzker said. “They want mayhem on the ground. They want to create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”

On “Fox & Friends” on Sunday, Noem contended that some protesters in Chicago were planning attacks and setting bounties to kidnap or kill federal law enforcement.

“Our intelligence indicates that these people are organized. They’re getting more and more people on their team as far as attacking officers, and they’re making plans to ambush them and to kill them,” Noem said, without citing specific threats.

The Chicago area was calm Sunday afternoon, both outside the ICE facility in Broadview and in the city neighborhood of Brighton Park, where weekend journeyers bustled past pieces of taillight marking where colliding vehicles had led to the shooting Saturday.

So far, federal law enforcement deployed in Portland and Chicago have been from agencies under the control of the Department of Homeland Security, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations.

In cities where Trump has ordered an increased federal presence, masked officers in plainclothes have been recorded arresting immigrants and, at times, U.S. citizens.

Immigration officers are trained to avoid using force when making an arrest, but viral videos have shown officers tackling people and smashing car windows.

Agents are allowed to use deadly force if they have reason to believe an officer faces “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.”

Other actions that have drawn criticism are likewise not against the law. There is no legal requirement for ICE officers to provide their names, though federal law indicates they must identify themselves as such as soon as “practicable” after an arrest.

While internal ICE policies require agents to display their badges, they don’t have to comply if they believe their safety is at risk. And there is no constitutional prohibition of immigration officers’ use of masks.

Such face coverings have traditionally been avoided by law enforcement because it tends to intimidate, a tactic criticized last week by U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston. Young, appointed by Ronald Reagan, ruled the administration had been illegally targeting noncitizen protesters in violation of their First Amendment free speech rights, in part with ICE agents wearing masks “to terrorize Americans into quiescence.”

Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, described the clashes in Oregon as “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers” and said local and state officials “have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life.”

“The deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself,” Miller, an architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, wrote on X. “The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge.”

The scene outside the Portland ICE facility on Sunday was largely subdued, punctuated by occasional scuffles that were recorded and live-streamed by witnesses and participants on all sides. Wider confrontations had occurred Saturday when the facility’s metal gates swung open and federal officers emerged in formation to move protesters back before vehicles entered or left.

By midday Sunday, only a handful of demonstrators were present and traffic flowed freely.

Last week, in an address in Quantico, Virginia, before generals and admirals summoned from around the world, Trump said he needed armed forces to police American cities, decrying what he said was “the enemy within” and saying that he should be allowed to use military force domestically.

Trump on Sunday continued to press the issue, saying: “Portland is burning to the ground. You have agitators, insurrectionists. Turn on your television, look at your television. The governor, the mayor, the politicians are petrified for their lives.”