Appeals court allows Trump administration to deploy National Guard to Portland

2025-10-20 22:32:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

An Appeals Court ruling will allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, saying it is likely to succeed in appealing an order that blocked the deployment.

The appeals court's decision, a significant legal victory in a showdown over presidential power that is unfolding on multiple fronts, grants the administration's request to suspend a lower court order blocking the deployment of troops while the appeal is ongoing.

The three-judge panel gave its opinion after U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut decided last week to extend her temporary restraining order barring the deployment of federal troops in Portland.

"Regardless of what happens next, the Oregon (Department of Justice) will continue to fight to uphold Oregon's laws and Constitution," Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a social media post on Wednesday.

The president has cited protests outside the Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility to justify calling out troops to the dark blue city.

The decision comes as President Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to send the National Guard to San Francisco, as his administration continues efforts to crack down on a growing list of cities it claims are riddled with crime.

"San Francisco was really one of the great cities of the world and then, 15 years ago, everything went wrong, it disappeared," Trump said during an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

"We're going to go to San Francisco and make it great."

“Nobody wants you here,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a social media post in response to Trump’s comments. “You will destroy one of America’s greatest cities.”

The president told Bartiromo that the cities he thinks need troops are almost exclusively run by Democrats, describing them as unsafe and a disaster. Trump also claimed that he could invoke the Insurrection Act at any time - a rarely used law that allows the president to deploy military forces to the US in certain limited situations.

The mobilization of National Guard troops in cities like Chicago, Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon, has been met with fierce reactions from residents, as well as local and state leaders - including some who have gone so far as to sue the administration.

The troop deployments have also sparked massive protests in these cities and helped spur a second "No Kings" rally over the weekend, where millions of people attended more than 2,700 events across the country to protest the Trump administration./ CNA