When President Donald Trump mobilized the Oregon National Guard last month, military officials acknowledged it could take a little over a week to deploy troops to Portland.
Now after more than three weeks of uncertainty, Monday’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision favoring Trump means the president is one big step closer to sending troops to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland.
The deployment could, at least in theory, come within days, based on discussions among lawyers and a judge in federal court.
Members of the Oregon and California National Guard are said to be stationed and waiting at one or two Oregon military training centers. They could conceivably arrive within hours of Trump winning another plea before a federal judge or the wider 9th Circuit.
But the reality is, it’s unclear when or if troops will arrive or what would happen if they do.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reached out over the past week, including on Monday, to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Oregon Military Department, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s office and Gov. Tina Kotek’s Office to ask about logistics and how soon troops could arrive. They either didn’t respond, said they didn’t know or said they were not authorized to answer questions specific to this story.
Following Monday’s legal decision, Kotek again called for the Trump administration to explain how National Guard members would be deployed in Oregon.
Referring to military training areas on the Oregon coast and in Clackamas County, the governor said during a news conference, “We have approximately 200 Oregon National Guard members still at Camp Rilea in limbo, as well as the California National Guard members at Camp Withycombe. No idea of the mission, no idea of the timeline."
State Rep. Paul Evans, a Monmouth Democrat, said troops are likely prepared to depart training facilities at Camp Rilea in Warrenton and Camp Withycombe in Happy Valley on a moment’s notice. That means that once the legal dust settles, troops could be in Portland within hours of an official directive, he said.
Evans, a member of the Oregon National Guard from 1997 to 2013, is basing his best guesses on the Guard connections he’s maintained and the work he’s done recently to try to restructure Oregon law. He tried to pass legislation earlier this year that would have made it more difficult for Trump to wrest control of the National Guard.
Before troops could end up in Portland, here’s what would need to happen:
First, the federal government would need to ask the lower court judge — U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut — to dissolve a second temporary freeze on Trump sending National Guard troops from any state, including California, to the ICE facility. Officials did that Monday.
Immergut said she’d then give the city of Portland and the state of Oregon 24 hours to respond to that motion. Trump administration lawyers asked Immergut Monday not to wait for the local response.
A larger swath of judges on the 29-judge 9th Circuit could review the three-judge panel’s ruling from Monday. Moments after the ruling, the city and the state vowed to request such an appeal. A senior 9th Circuit judge also asked his colleagues to vote on whether to rehear the case. It’s unclear how realistic the city’s and state’s chances of success are.
When Trump called for troops last month, the Oregon National Guard said it would take time to mobilize them because officials would need to select the soldiers to deploy, confirm they are able to step away from work and make sure they are medically able to be mobilized. It also needed to train them for the specific tasks they’d be deployed to do.
Officials have said 200 Oregon and California National Guard troops are now just a short distance from Portland. Camp Rilea, on the Oregon coast, is less than a two-hour drive. Driving to South Portland from Camp Withycombe, in Happy Valley, takes just 30 minutes.
Trump called up 200 to 300 California National Guard troops — sending at least some of them to Camp Withycombe in early October. But, aside from Kotek’s statement Monday, it’s unclear where they actually are — with California Gov. Gavin Newsom saying on Oct. 5 that they “will soon be heading home.”
Since late September, Trump has described Portland as out-of-control, using phrases such as “war ravaged,” “hell hole” and “like a third world country” that has been burning night after night for years.
In his Sept. 28 memo calling for Oregon National Guard members to be federalized and deployed to Portland, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote that Guard members would “protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and … protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.”
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