A coalition of news organizations is asking a federal judge to give them access to documents regarding President Donald Trump’s attempt to deploy the National Guard to Portland last fall.
The group, which includes Oregon Public Broadcasting, filed a motion on March 6 asking U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut to unseal exhibits in the case related to “Operation Skipjack,” in which federal officers surged to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland in 2025.
FILE — Bill Glenn protests against the National Guard deployment to Portland outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., shortly after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the National Guard can deploy to the city on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025.
Eli Imadali / OPB
The group is represented by the legal nonprofit organizations Public Justice and Public Accountability.
“Oregonians deserve to know what prompted and drove the federal government’s attempt to place troops in their streets,” said Athul K. Acharya, Public Accountability’s executive director, in a news release Friday. “The courts belong to the public, and the records of this case should too. Accountability begins with access.”
In addition to OPB, The Oregonian, Oregon Capital Chronicle, KPTV and the Associated Press are part of the coalition of newsrooms. The motion seeks to get “access to dozens of trial exhibits that are currently sealed by court order, and it will also ask the court to disclose the identities of two Federal Protective Services officers who were allowed to testify anonymously,” according to the release.
Related: DOCUMENT: The motion filed by the coalition of media organizations seeking release of the records
The sealed documents include depositions from federal officers as well as incident reports from the Federal Protective Service, which is tasked with protecting the Portland ICE facility. Those accounts could provide insight into what Department of Homeland Security officials were seeing on the ground when responding to protests throughout summer and fall 2025.
Trump announced on social media in late September that he would take control of 200 members of the Oregon National Guard and deploy them to the ICE building in South Portland. The order came in response to frequent protests outside the facility, which peaked in June, but had largely quieted by September.
In a post on Truth Social Sept. 27, Trump called the city “war ravaged” and under assault by “domestic terrorists.” That characterization didn’t match what local news organizations were seeing on the ground. Later reporting from ProPublica showed that in early September, stories from Fox News conflated videos from the ICE protests with those from protests in 2020, when Portland residents took to the streets night after night in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The state and the city of Portland quickly filed a lawsuit to block the National Guard deployment, and challenged the underlying legal reasoning in the case. Days later, Judge Immergut issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Oregon guard from being federalized, and quickly scheduled a trial on the underlying case for the end of October.
An illustration of the federal trial on Oct. 29, 2025 before U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut over the attempt to deploy the Oregon National Guard by President Trump
Rita Sabler / OPB
The short deadline for trial resulted in attorneys for Oregon, California (who later joined the lawsuit), Portland and the federal government submitting a large volume of exhibits in the case. Those included internal emails, local and federal law enforcement logs, surveillance videos from the ICE facility and depositions of federal officials, among other documentation of the months leading up to the attempted deployment.
Information contained within these documents has already provided insight into federal actions. During the trial, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice told Immergut that some Oregon National Guard members had been deployed to the ICE facility, potentially violating the judge’s order. Emails submitted as part of the trial confirmed that information, and were widely reported by news outlets, including OPB.
After the trial, OPB filed public records requests with the federal government, state of Oregon and city of Portland to get copies of the exhibits. While hundreds of those documents were released by state and city officials, hundreds more were sealed under a protective order — particularly, those submitted by the federal government.
The three-day trial ultimately resulted in a win for the states and city. In a 106-page ruling, Immergut concluded that the federalization of the Oregon guard violated the U.S. Constitution. The Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and a hearing was set for June.
In early February, the Trump administration told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that it no longer wanted to challenge Immergut’s ruling and moved to dismiss the appeal.
This story was reported and written by OPB Public Safety and Health Editor Michelle Wiley. It was edited by Investigative Editor Tony Schick. No OPB news executive or member of the legal team reviewed this story before publication.
