Camp Withycombe on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. The camp serves as headquarters for several Oregon Army National Guard military units.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
A panel of appeals court judges could decide Thursday whether to uphold or reverse an order barring National Guard troops in Portland.
Or the panel could act sooner.
In issuing a scheduling order on Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left its timeline up in the air. At the same time it set oral arguments for 9 a.m. on Thursday, the court noted it might simply opt to issue a decision based on briefs submitted by attorneys for the Trump administration on one side and lawyers for the state of Oregon and city of Portland on the other.
That ambiguity will have plenty of people hitting “refresh” on the case docket.
The legal battle over whether President Trump has authority to send National Guard members to help fend off protestors at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland has become a drama of national interest. It will help dictate how far the president’s ambitions of sending military forces into predominantly blue cities can extend.
At issue in the case is an order issued Saturday by U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, which temporarily blocked the administration from sending 200 Oregon National Guard members to the city.
Immergut signed that order after finding that protests that have played out near the South Portland ICE facility in recent months have not met the threshold for Trump to send in the National Guard. Despite the president’s frequent descriptions of Portland as a war zone, the protests have largely featured a small number of people demonstrating against stepped up immigration enforcement under Trump. Immergut found the protests could be addressed by federal officers and Portland police.
Protesters move away from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility after police use tear gas and pepper balls in Portland, Ore., Oct. 4, 2025.
Eden McCall / OPB
The federal government disputes that finding. In appealing Immergut’s ruling, it argued the demonstrations, while often small, have involved property damage and mistreatment of federal officers. The administration says the protests qualify as a rebellion that has left it unable to enforce federal law — the legal standard by which Trump is attempting to send in the guard.
“The order imposes irreparable harm by impinging on the ability of the President and the Secretary of War to use the National Guard to protect federal officials enforcing federal law,” reads a motion filed Sunday morning.
The U.S. Department of Justice is hoping for a repeat of its success before the 9th Circuit in June, after it sent National Guard troops to address immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles.
As in Portland, a federal judge in California issued an order temporarily blocking that deployment. But the appeals court immediately stayed that order, allowing troops to remain on the ground.
In its appeal of Immergut’s ruling, the Trump administration asked 9th Circuit judges to immediately halt the restraining order until a hearing could be held. The court did not signal it would do so, instead scheduling oral arguments for later this week.
“This ruling is another validation of the facts on the ground in Portland,” Gov. Tina Kotek said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “It is also a clear and forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s misuse of states’ National Guard.”
The restraining order at the heart of the appeal — the one barring Trump from sending Oregon National Guard troops to Portland — is just one Immergut issued over the weekend. The jurist issued an expanded ruling Sunday evening, after Trump signaled he would send National Guard members from California and Texas to Portland. That second ruling bars the deployment of any National Guard members to the city.
While Trump has been stymied in Oregon, he has also begun sending National Guard troops to Chicago. That deployment is the subject of a separate lawsuit.
