While I was skulking around the ICE headquarters in Portland, watching the early evening show that the assorted mental patients were putting on for a growing population of reporters and Antifa-curious citizens, an Oregon federal judge was holding a telephone hearing with state and federal attorneys in which she decided that the government could use no federalized National Guard troops to protect federal officers.
Oregon Federal District Court Judge Karin Immergut decided for a second time that federalized National Guard troops could not be used to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers or the federal building that dangerous militants have routinely mobbed for five months.
In her first ruling, Immergut, a Trump appointee, which means that two leftist senators had to approve her, ruled that there was no danger at the federal building for ICE officers and ruled that no federalized Oregon National Guard troops could be used to help protect the facility or its officers.
Within hours of ordering a temporary stop to the Trump administration from using Oregon National Guard troops, the Secretary of War, in a brilliant move that has White House aide Stephen Miller's fingerprints all over it, ordered California and Texas National Guard troops to mobilize to Oregon to do the job. The president had already cleared federal legal hurdles that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta threw up via the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — the same court where Immergut's ruling will be appealed.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™ — The AG Steps in After Portland 'Justice' Strikes Again
In Immergut's second ruling, stemming from her hastily-called Sunday evening telephone hearing, she told attorneys that she was "troubled by now hearing that both California and Texas National Guard are being sent into Oregon" and that the deployments violated the 10th Amendment regarding state sovereignty. She scolded the Justice Department attorney, Eric Hamilton, when he argued that her order concerned only Oregon troops. “You are missing the point,” she told him.
In fact, Immergut's original hearing on Friday concerned only Oregon National Guard troops, but on Sunday night, she took the cue of the leftists running California and Oregon and materially changed the original ruling to include all National Guard troops — including D.C.'s.
That dog's not going to hunt for long.
The judge doesn't expect it to stand, of course, but is simply providing cover for the militants and their government patrons to extend their anti-Trump calendar by a few more days.
White House policy counselor Stephen Miller lashed out at the "egregious" ruling as one of the worst "thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen — and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat."
He sent a howler on X explaining that, "The President has undisputed authority under both statute and the Constitution to deploy troops, stationed in any state, to defend a federal facility from domestic terrorism or violent assault. (Just as he has the authority to dispatch any federal protective asset from and to any state)."
"The Portland Police have refused to render aid and assistance to ICE officers," Miller fumed. And he's right. There's a stand-down order, whether it's in writing or not, preventing Portland Police Bureau officers from lifting a finger to aid ICE officers who are in danger from the incendiary devices routinely thrown by protesters, and attacks on ICE and other federal agents' vehicles trying to ingress and egress from the facility.
The stand-down order is acknowledged in a recent lawsuit brought by a neighbor about protester noise. In discovery, the neighbor's attorney described a police log entry regarding Antifa using munitions and gases against ICE officers by saying, "If it were not ICE, we could assist directly."
Related: A School Moved Out Because of Violence at ICE HQ Portland and You'll Never Guess Who Moved In
The Antifa agitators operate a dirty and illegal encampment on the sidewalks next to the ICE facility, and militants have been keeping up neighbors throughout the night with loud noises, including high-pitched, electronic whistles for long periods of time, amplified bullhorn chants, and other methods to annoy ICE officers, but which annoy everyone else too. In addition to this encampment, which is routinely resupplied at a storage facility only steps away, they also share a nearby safe house in a nearby apartment complex. Being a violent disrupting presence to stymie federal agents isn't cheap, ya know.
The local police's posture of doing nothing about the Antifa protests and overt acts of violence against ICE is an ongoing danger to the local neighborhood.
An older woman observing the fray from a half a block away was overheard saying, "it's getting terrifying" with all the protesters around. Another old woman who lives nearby told me she supported the protesters. Either way, Portlanders living in this neighborhood of mixed-use properties are less safe because Antifa holds sway over a growing swath of it, and the police department's unwillingness to do almost nothing about it.
That's no way to live. But apparently, the governmental institutions, the governor, the attorney general, and the city of Portland socialist council members are just fine with it.
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