The Justice Department revealed Wednesday that members of the National Guard were briefly sent to Portland, Ore., earlier this month despite a judge’s order barring their deployment.
Jean Lin, a DOJ lawyer, told U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut that Oregon National Guard troops were dispatched to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in the city between 11 p.m. local time on Oct. 4 and 2 a.m. on Oct. 5.
But at 3:40 p.m. on Oct. 4, Immergut had handed down a temporary restraining order, or TRO, blocking the administration’s use of Oregon troops called into federal service. She placed restrictions on all guard troops the next day in a second order.
“We’ll discuss later whether that’s contempt and in direct violation of my TRO, but we’re moving on,” the judge said.
It was not clear how many soldiers were sent or what they were tasked to do. Lin said they “completed the shift.”
The U.S. Northern Command, which oversees the National Guard troops that have been federalized, declined to provide additional information or comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
The disclosure came on the first day of a trial in Portland over President Trump’s efforts to deploy military troops to patrol the city’s streets.
State and city officials who sued have asked Immergut to block Trump’s bid to send in the National Guard, after the president deemed the city “war-ravaged” and vowed to protect it.
Caroline Turco, a lawyer representing Portland, said during opening arguments that the evidence would show that the city does not need the National Guard, while the government contended that Congress endowed the president with vast latitude to decide when calling in the troops is warranted.
The troops remain barred from being deployed, for now, as Immergut’s orders are intact.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit paused one of the orders last week, but the appeals court vacated that decision late Tuesday, saying the full court would rehear the case.
Trump has also attempted to send the National Guard to other Democratic-led cities, with varying success. Troops are deployed in California and Washington, D.C., but courts have so far blocked deployment in Illinois. Legal challenges are pending in each state.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to let the president send troops to the Chicago area, but it has not yet ruled. On Wednesday, the justices asked for additional information, signaling a decision could be weeks away.
