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The Trump administration will face off with Oregon state leaders in court on Wednesday over whether the president can federalize National Guard troops and deploy them to Portland, a city President Donald Trump has said is “war ravaged” and in need of military reinforcements.
Judge Karin Immergut will preside over the trial, which will begin at 9 a.m. local time and is expected to stretch through the rest of the week.
The trial comes as the administration has faced a string of setbacks in Oregon, where it has wanted to deploy 200 National Guard soldiers as added protection for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and other federal officers but has been unable to because of repeated court orders.
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Immergut, a Trump appointee, issued two of those orders blocking Trump from deploying both in-state and out-of-state troops, and on appeal, the 9th Circuit briefly ruled in Trump’s favor but reversed course this week.
All the orders related to Oregon in the lower court and 9th Circuit have been issued on an emergency basis, and Immergut’s three-day trial is expected to produce a more permanent decision, though it will likely be appealed by either party right away.
Trump has faced obstacles to deploying National Guard soldiers in numerous blue cities, where the administration claims illegal immigration and street crime are rampant.
In court papers filed ahead of the trial, DOJ lawyers said the deployment to Portland was “amply justified.”
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“In the weeks and months preceding the President’s decision, agitators assaulted federal officers and damaged federal property in numerous ways, spray-painted violent threats, blockaded the vehicle entrance to the Portland ICE facility, trapped officers in their cars, followed them when they attempted to leave the facility, threatened them at the facility, menaced them at their homes, doxed them online, and threatened to kill them on social media,” the DOJ lawyers wrote.
They added that law enforcement officers assigned to handle immigration-related tasks had been diverted to managing the local unrest, which they said took them away from officers’ regular job duties.
“The record is replete with evidence of the [Portland Police Bureau] failing to provide assistance when federal officials have requested it,” they wrote.
State lawyers, meanwhile, claimed Congress’ laws governing National Guard deployment allow the president to federalize the reserved troops against the will of state governors only as a last resort.
“The ordinary challenges of governing cannot justify the extraordinary measure Defendants employed here,” Oregon’s lawyers wrote.
Also looming in the background is a related case pending before the Supreme Court. The high court is weighing whether to take up Trump’s National Guard deployment in Chicago, and that case could have far-reaching effects on the president’s similar fights in other states, including Oregon and California.
Fox News’ Lee Ross contributed to this report.
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