WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday ordered 200 Oregon National Guard troops to be deployed under federal authority while the state filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s move to send military forces into the Democratic-run city of Portland.
The Republican president on Saturday announced plans to send troops into Portland, saying they would be used to protect federal immigration facilities against “domestic terrorists” and that he was authorizing them to use “full force, if necessary.”
Trump’s deployments of military forces into other municipalities led by Democrats, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have spurred legal challenges and protests.
Oregon’s suit was filed against Trump, Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in federal court in Portland on Sunday by Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. The suit accused Trump of exceeding his powers.
“Citing nothing more than baseless, wildly hyperbolic pretext – the President says Portland is a ‘War ravaged’ city ‘under siege’ from ‘domestic terrorists.’ Defendants have thus infringed on Oregon’s sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard resource,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit stated that protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Portland have been small and relatively contained since June.
Trump’s planned deployment caught many at the Pentagon by surprise, six U.S. officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. On Sunday, Hegseth signed a memo ordering 200 Oregon National Guard troops deployed under federal authority. The memo was made public as an attachment to Oregon’s lawsuit.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Sending in 200 National Guard troops to guard a single building is not normal,” Rayfield said in a statement, apparently referring to an ICE facility.
Violent crime in Portland has dropped in the first six months of 2025, according to preliminary data released by the Major Cities Chiefs Association in its Midyear Violent Crime Report. Homicides fell by 51% compared to the same period a year earlier, according to these statistics.
Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has made crime a major focus of his administration even as violent crime rates have fallen in many U.S. cities.
In 2020, protests erupted in downtown Portland, the Pacific Northwest enclave with a reputation as a liberal city, following the killing in Minneapolis of a Black man named George Floyd by a white police officer. The protests dragged on for months, and some civic leaders at the time said they were spurred rather than quelled by Trump’s deployment of federal troops.
It was unclear whether Trump’s warning that U.S. troops could use “full force” on the streets of Portland meant he was somehow authorizing lethal force and, if so, under what conditions. U.S. troops are able to use force in self-defense on domestic U.S. deployments.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, like other Oregon officials, learned of Trump’s order from social media on Saturday.
Many in Trump’s own Pentagon were caught off guard.
“It was a bolt from the blue,” one of the U.S. officials said, adding that the military was previously focused on carrying out prudent planning for potential deployments of troops by Trump into cities such as Chicago and Memphis.
There have been growing tensions in major U.S. cities over Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown days after a shooting targeting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas left one detainee dead and two others seriously wounded.
(Reporting by Idrees AliEditing by Humeyra Pamuk and Will Dunham)
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