A federal judge on Saturday blocked President Trump’s attempt to federalize and deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, saying the protests that have raged in a limited part of the city for the last few months don’t require the military.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut scolded the president for being too quick to turn to the military for a situation the judge said federal agencies have been able to handle so far without major issues.

And Judge Immergut cast the ongoing protests, which have raged outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s offices since June, as part of a “longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach.”

“This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation,” wrote the judge, a Trump appointee.

She issued a temporary restraining order halting the federalization of the guard.

Mr. Trump had previously federalize and deployed troops to Los Angeles and that move was backed, at least in preliminary rulings, by the federal appellate circuit court for the West Coast.

But Judge Immergut said Portland is different from Los Angeles because the level of disruption has been lower and peaked in June. Since then, she said, federal agencies have been able to manage even with the ongoing protests.

“As of September 27, 2025, it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in Portland. During this time frame, there were sporadic events requiring either [Portland Police Bureau] monitoring or federal law enforcement intervention, but overall, the protests were small and uneventful,” the judge concluded.

Trump officials had argued that the federal government had to pull agents and officers from other parts of the country to quell the Portland violence, which made clear the regular contingent of law enforcement wasn’t enough.

Judge Immergut said that was too weak a standard to use in deploying troops. She said it could justify a president sending troops “virtually anywhere at any time.”

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.