Dissenting justice says decision ‘erodes core constitutional principles’ and risks violating freedom of expression.
A United States court of appeals has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can move forward with plans to deploy soldiers to Portland, Oregon, although another earlier ruling still bars it from doing so, for now.
The Monday ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court will allow the Trump administration to send 200 National Guard members to the Democrat-run city, despite the absence of any serious emergency and the objections of state and local officials.
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It comes after Trump’s Department of Justice appealed the first of two rulings from US District Judge Karin Immergut, prohibiting Trump from calling up the troops so he could send them to Portland.
“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” when he federalised the state’s National Guard, the Court of Appeals wrote in its majority opinion, supported by two judges out of a panel of three.
Another temporary restraining order, which prohibits the president from sending any National Guard members to Oregon at all, and which was issued by Immergut after Trump tried to evade the first order by deploying California troops instead, remains in place.
Soon after the ruling on Monday, the Justice Department asked Immergut to immediately dissolve her second order, arguing that it is not the role of the courts to second-guess the president’s determination about when to deploy troops.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, said he would ask for a broader panel of the appeals court to reconsider Monday’s decision.
“Today’s ruling, if allowed to stand, would give the president unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification,” Rayfield said. “We are on a dangerous path in America.”
The Trump administration has deployed armed forces to Democrat-run cities across the country, along with aggressive immigration raids in which heavily-armed federal agents wearing masks have pulled people off the streets, demanding that they prove their legal status.
Many US citizens have also been swept up in those raids, during which civil liberty groups have accused immigration agents of operating based on racial profiling, and detaining people without cause.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed disappointment in the court’s decision.
“As the founders emphasised, domestic deployment of troops should be reserved for rare, extreme emergencies as a last resort, but that is far from what the Trump administration is doing in Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and DC,” Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement.
“The presence of troops in otherwise beautiful vibrant American cities erodes a sense of safety and undermines the core freedoms to assemble and voice dissent.”
The Trump administration has claimed that Portland is “war-ravaged” by protesters, who it says are blocking immigration enforcement measures, despite the absence of any serious crisis conditions in the city. Trump and his allies have often employed vague allegations of emergency conditions as a pretext for wielding extraordinary powers both at home and abroad.
Demonstrators have worn costumes while protesting outside of immigration facilities, sometimes donning dinosaur and frog outfits and blasting music. Federal agents have faced criticism of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators.
“Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” Judge Susan Graber wrote after casting the dissenting vote on the panel’s ruling.
“But today’s decision is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.”
