A US judge on Saturday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from deploying 200 National Guard troops to the city of Portland while a lawsuit challenging the move plays out.
The ruling is a setback for Trump, a Republican, as he seeks to dispatch the military to cities he describes as lawless over the objections of their Democratic leaders.
WHY DO PORTLAND’S LEADERS OBJECT?
Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s office filed the lawsuit on September 28, a day after Trump said he would send troops to Portland to protect federal immigration facilities from domestic terrorists.
Oregon asked the court to declare the deployment illegal and block it from going forward, saying Trump was exaggerating the threat of protests against his immigration policies.
While Trump described the city as “War ravaged,” Oregon said that Portland protests were “small and sedate,” resulting in only 25 arrests in mid-June and no arrests in the three-and-a-half-months since June 19.
WHY DOES TRUMP WANT THE TROOPS THERE?
Department of Justice lawyer Eric Hamilton said that “vicious and cruel radicals” had laid siege to the Portland headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The decision to send 200 troops, just five per cent of the number recently sent to respond to Los Angeles protests, showed restraint, Hamilton said.
Caroline Turco, representing Portland, said that there had been no violence against ICE officers for months and that recent ICE protests were “sedate” in the week before Trump declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring less than a dozen protesters.
“The president’s perception of what is happening in Portland is not the reality on the ground,” Turco said.
“The president’s perception is that it is World War Two out here. The reality is that this is a beautiful city with a sophisticated police force that can handle the situation.”
Oregon’s lawsuit argued that Trump’s deployment violates several federal laws and the state’s sovereign right to police its own citizens.
Trump’s decision to send troops only to “disfavoured” Democratic cities like Portland also violates the state’s rights under the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, according to the lawsuit.
HAS TRUMP DONE THIS TO OTHER CITIES?
The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to Trump’s deployments of military forces to Democrat-led cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, which he says were overrun with crime and hostile to immigration enforcement.
In September, a judge blocked the Trump administration from using the military to fight crime in California, but that ruling is on hold while the administration appeals.
Washington DC’s Democratic attorney general filed a lawsuit the same month to end Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital. A judge has yet to rule on the request.
With Reuters
