The Trump administration briefly deployed Oregon National Guard soldiers to Portland earlier this month, hours after a Federal District Court judge had ordered any such deployment blocked, the government revealed on Wednesday.
The District Court judge, Karin Immergut, raised the possibility Wednesday that the deployment, however brief, had put the administration in contempt of court as she began a trial to determine whether to lift a temporary restraining order, or T.R.O., on troop deployments or make it permanent.
“We’ll discuss later whether that’s contempt and a direct violation of my T.R.O.,” Judge Immergut told a Justice Department lawyer after learning of the deployment.
President Trump wants to send National Guard troops to protect the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, which has been the site of daily protests for more than four months. Oregon and the city of Portland have sued to stop that deployment, and a trial in the case began Wednesday.
But Judge Immergut imposed temporary restraining orders first on the use of Oregon National Guard soldiers beginning at 3:40 p.m. on Oct. 4, then on all guard troops the next day.
Before the trial began Wednesday morning, a Justice Department lawyer, Jean Lin, told Judge Immergut that Oregon soldiers under federal control were sent to Portland between 11 p.m. on Oct. 4 and 2 a.m. on Oct. 5. Ms. Lin did not say how many soldiers were sent or what they did at the ICE building.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Northern Command, which oversees the federalized National Guard soldiers, said military officials were looking into news of the brief deployment. Emails submitted as evidence in the case show a nine-person advance team from the Oregon National Guard, part of 200 Guard troops federalized by the Department of Defense, reported working at the ICE facility after the temporary restraining order was filed.
The issue marked the second time this week that the Justice Department had to come clean before judges considering Mr. Trump’s planned deployment in Portland. Federal lawyers have said the National Guard was needed in Portland because the federal government had exhausted existing resources, even after moving Federal Protective Service officers and other law enforcement agents with other federal agencies to Portland from other parts of the country.
But in a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday, U.S. attorneys acknowledged that they overstated the number of federal agents reassigned to Oregon.
In a brief filed before an Oct. 20 appeals court hearing, the government said that 115 Federal Protective Service officers from other parts of the country had been surged as a group to the ICE building and stated that “it is undisputed that nearly a quarter of the agency’s entire F.P.S. capacity had to be redirected over a relatively short period to a single location in one medium-sized American city due to the unrest there.”
But in a letter to the appeals court on Monday, a federal lawyer said 86 F.P.S. officers were actually sent to Portland over the summer, including some who were deployed multiple times. The lawyer also noted that the reference to “nearly a quarter” of the federal agency’s capacity being sent to Oregon was simply incorrect.
What the federal government meant to report, the lawyer wrote, was that 13 percent of the agency’s inspectors — who are responsible for crisis response, investigations and security assessments at federal buildings — had been deployed to Portland over the course of the summer.
On Wednesday, in the first day of what’s expected to be a three-day trial, lawyers for the city of Portland and the state of Oregon argued that the federal response to protests at the Portland ICE facility has been disorganized and needlessly violent.
“The court will hear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have staffing challenges,” Scott Kennedy, a senior assistant attorney general for Oregon, told the judge. “But that has nothing to do with Portland.”
On the witness stand Wednesday, Cmdr. Franz Schoening of the Portland Police said his officers frequently received conflicting and confusing information from Federal Protective Services officers that made it difficult for them to monitor potential criminal activity near the building.
Mr. Schoening, who often led the city’s police response to the ICE protests, described federal use of force as “unpredictable” and “disproportionate.” He recounted several incidents, including when a Portland Police officer was struck with a projectile fired by federal agents and when Portland officers were tear-gassed along with protesters. In one instance, federal officers shot crowd-control weapons at demonstrators after a tear-gas canister fired by a federal agent ricocheted onto the roof of the ICE building.
Federal lawyers, who will present their case Thursday, contend that Portland and Oregon’s leaders have failed to help ensure that immigration laws can be enforced in the state by refusing to assist in clearing demonstrators from in front of the ICE building.
Oregon’s sanctuary law bars police officers from participating in immigration enforcement efforts in which the person being pursued or detained is not accused of any crimes beyond being an undocumented immigrant. For example, Portland police officers have moved traffic out of the street in front of the ICE building, but they have not moved demonstrators directly blocking the ICE building driveway.
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