Oregon sues to block President Donald Trump from deploying troops to Portland
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said Sunday that the state has filed a lawsuit (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26159474-stateandcityofportland/) to block President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland.
Rayfield’s office raced to file the complaint Sunday after Gov. Tina Kotek received a memo from Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, calling 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into federal service in the city for 60 days. The memo arrived the day after Trump posted on social media that he had authorized federal troops (https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2025/09/trump-says-hell-send-troops-to-portland-authorizes-full-force.html) to protect what he dubbed “War ravaged Portland (https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2025/09/social-media-reacts-to-trumps-war-ravaged-description-of-portland.html).
Rayfield, appearing with Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson during a virtual news conference Sunday afternoon, decried any attempt to send military troops to an Oregon city, calling it an infringement of state and local sovereignty and a violation of federal law as the suit was filed.
‘The facts cannot justify this overreach,’ says the 41-page suit filed by the State of Oregon and City of Portland against Trump.
It notes that protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland have been small in recent weeks (https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/09/how-protests-outside-portland-ice-unfolded-before-trumps-troop-announcement.html), typically drawing less than 30 people.
‘Defendants’ heavy-handed deployment of troops threatens to escalate tensions and stoke new unrest,’ the suit says.
Filed in federal court in Portland, it marks the latest legal challenge to Trump’s move to send troops into cities and asks a judge to bar Trump from any deployment of troops to Oregon.
‘I am no longer in charge of the members (of the Oregon National Guard) that he will be calling up,’ Kotek said.
She said she had no idea when troops the president planned to send to Portland would arrive or what they would be doing. ‘I don’t have any details,’ she said.
The memo (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26159476-secwar-memo-to-or-28sep25/) Kotek received said the chief of the National Guard Bureau will coordinate details of the mobilization with the Oregon National Guard’s adjutant general, along with the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of the U.S. Northern Command.
The Oregon National Guard is in the process of mobilizing 200 members ‘to support the protection of federal law facilities’ for 60 days, confirmed Lt. Col. Stephen Bomar, spokesperson for the Oregon Military Department.
‘Our job is to protect Oregonians and defend national interests when directed as we are now,’ he said in an email.
Trump has moved to federalize National Guard troops under federal law known as Title 10, Section 12406. The law says the president can call up the National Guard in federal service when the president is unable with regular forces to ‘execute the laws of the United States,’ repel an invasion by a foreign nation or suppress a rebellion or the danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government.
Such orders, the code says, shall be issued through the ‘governors of the States,’ or in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of its National Guard.
Rayfield’s office moved to file the suit as soon as possible and will be filing a temporary restraining order within the next 24 hours to try to block an arrival of troops. He said he hopes to get a hearing before a judge later this week.
‘In America, we don’t use our United States military on our own citizens, except in extreme circumstances,’ Rayfield said.
Kotek called it a ‘sad day for Oregon,’ saying she was disturbed that the Trump administration was not listening to the people of the state.
The governor said she shared her strong objections with Trump (https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/09/7-minutes-to-make-the-case-how-oregons-governor-tried-to-talk-trump-out-of-sending-troops-to-portland.html) during a seven-minute phone call on Saturday after waking up to his social media post.
She said Trump had told her during that call that he thought Portland’s federal courthouse was ‘under attack,’ which she said was absolutely not true. She informed him that the only demonstrations occurring were outside the federal immigration building and they were ‘being managed.’
She then heard from an assistant to Trump by text message that Trump was concerned about activities outside Portland’s ICE building, but she said she thought she’d have an opportunity to follow up with him on Sunday.
‘This is not necessary, and I believe it’s unlawful and it will make Oregonians less safe,’ she said, of the troop deployment decision.
The suit alleges that Trump’s actions violate the 10th Amendment’s guarantee that police power — including ensuring safety at protests and deterring violence crimes — “resides with the states, not the federal government.”
The presence of National Guard troops will create ‘confusion among the public,’ threaten to undermine the work local police are doing to maintain order and combat crime and harm businesses and tourism in Portland, it said.
The Portland Police Bureau is fully equipped to address the sporadic protests outside the ICE building, the suit said. Its Central Precinct has been monitoring the nightly protests outside the ICE building and has the ability to send additional officers from other precincts, call in its Rapid Reaction Team of officers to deal with crowd control or rely on its county and state police partners if needed, according to the suit.
‘The unlawful deployment of federalized National Guard troops to usurp that law enforcement role will directly interfere with the ability of state and local law enforcement to deal with any given situation,’ the suit said.
Earlier this month, the District of Columbia’s attorney general filed a suit to try to halt the federal government’s deployment of National Guard to the district’s streets.
In California, a federal judge granted an injunction (https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/09/portlands-city-attorney-backed-california-in-legal-fight-against-federal-troops.html) declaring the action of federal troops in Los Angeles ‘an unlawful encroachment on state and local authority.’ The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has put a temporary hold, or stay, on the injunction as it considers the government’s appeal. City attorneys from Portland and Beaverton (https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/09/portlands-city-attorney-backed-california-in-legal-fight-against-federal-troops.html) joined about 30 other cities in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last Monday in support of California’s challenge and Breyer’s injunction.
Kotek said the Oregon National Guard members are Oregon citizens who are ‘trained for real emergencies,’ including wildfire suppression and are now being called into a ‘mission without a clear goal.’
‘I don’t need them in Portland,’ she said. ‘When there is no basis for this, it is incomprehensible. It is very concerning for our country.’
But the governor made it clear that she wants the public to respect the members of the Oregon National Guard, noting they are ‘citizen soldiers, who are our neighbors and our friends.’
‘I will use everything in my authority to support them as Oregonians, and I will have their back,’ she said.
Mayors from other cities across Oregon are expected to join with Mayor Wilson at Portland City Hall on Monday in support of the city’s challenge of Trump’s troop deployment, Wilson said. Wilson called the president’s actions a ‘big show of force,’ and said he and other mayors will be ‘pushing back at this overreach.’
‘It would be an understatement to say that I am so disappointed at the irresponsibility of our federal government,’ Wilson said. ‘We don’t need troops on our soil in Portland. Portland is not an enemy.’
