Portland: A federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from deploying the National Guard in Portland, ruling in a lawsuit brought by the state and city.
US District Judge Karin Immergut issued the order. The plaintiffs say a deployment would violate the US Constitution as well as a federal law that generally prohibits the military from being used to enforce domestic laws.
Immergut wrote that the case involves the intersection of three fundamental democratic principles: “the relationship between the federal government and the states, between the military and domestic law enforcement, and the balance of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
“Whether we choose to follow what the Constitution mandates with respect to these three relationships goes to the heart of what it means to live under the rule of law in the United States,” she wrote.
Generally speaking the president is allowed “a great level of deference” to federalise National Guard troops in situations where regular law enforcement forces are not able to execute the laws of the US, the judge said, but that has not been the case in Portland.
Plaintiffs were able to show that the demonstrations at the Portland immigration facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days or weeks leading up to the president’s order, the judge wrote, and “overall, the protests were small and uneventful.”