In a statement, the Department of Defense claimed that the troops would\u00a0be\u00a0sent to Oregon’s largest city “to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal personnel performing official duties, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”<\/p>\n
The federal ICE building in Portland has recently been the site of nightly protests that\u00a0city and state authorities have described as “small and sedate.” Trump, on the other hand, has described the city as “war-ravaged.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump’s militarized clampdown on immigration has been met with widespread protestsImage: Carlos Barria\/REUTERS<\/p>\n
Dr. Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, confirmed in an interview with DW that the deployments were clearly prohibited by law.<\/p>\n
“These mobilizations of the National Guard are a violation of the 10th Amendment, as judges now have said in several jurisdictions, including a California federal trial judge and now an Oregon trial judge,” she said, adding that “you can’t use the federal military to engage in law enforcement activities.”<\/p>\n
Finkelstein warned that the US is moving “in the direction of authoritarianism.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
She pointed\u00a0to the “clearly illegal use of federal troops to suppress constitutional rights, to suppress open dissent and… to gain control over independent sources of power, which is really what’s going on in the tussle with Democratic governors across the country. It is a bid to amass power on the part of the federal government.”<\/p>\n
Why does Trump want to send troops?<\/p>\n
The move to reassign the troops from California is Trump’s attempt to circumvent a federal judge’s order on Saturday<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0temporarily blocked him from deploying 200 soldiers from Oregon’s National Guard to Portland,\u00a0Oregon Governor\u00a0Tina Kotek said.<\/p>\n “The facts on the ground in Oregon haven’t changed,” Kotek said during a news conference Sunday. “There’s no need for military intervention in Oregon. There’s no insurrection in Portland, there’s no threat to national security. Oregon is our home, not a military target.”<\/p>\n On Saturday, District Judge Karin Immergut \u2014 who was appointed by Trump \u2014 disagreed with the White House’s claims that Portland is a “war zone,” and said the city’s “regular law enforcement forces” were able to deal with clashes between federal immigration agents and protesters.<\/p>\n Immergut said Trump’s description of Portland\u00a0was “simply untethered to the facts.”\u00a0The troop deployment has been blocked until at least October 18.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Immergut blocked Trump’s deployment of 200 California troops to Oregon, after a joint lawsuit by California and Oregon.<\/p>\n California, Oregon governors dispute Trump’s claims<\/p>\n The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said the deployment was “appalling” and “un-American.”<\/p>\n “It\u2019s about power,” Newsom said on X. “He is using our military as political pawns to build up his own ego.”<\/p>\n Newsom, a Democrat, has previously sparred with Trump when the US president sent National Guard troops and US Marines to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Newsom said the National Guard members who were being reassigned to Portland had been placed under Trump’s control<\/a> during the unrest in Los Angeles in June.<\/p>\n The California governor vowed to fight the move in court, urging the public not to “stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct.”<\/p>\n Donald Trump authorizes National Guard deployment to Chicago<\/p>\n To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n Trump also sending troops to Chicago<\/p>\n After the announcement that troops would be reassigned to Portland, the Democratic Governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, said late Sunday that Trump was ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon “and other locations.”<\/p>\n The Trump administration has described Chicago as the “world’s most dangerous city.”<\/p>\n While Illinois’ largest city has seen regular protests against federal ICE operations, Pritzker has rejected Trump’s claim that crime is out of control.<\/p>\n “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump\u2019s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another states’\u00a0military troops,” Pritzker said in a post on X Sunday night, urging Texas Governor Greg Abbott not to support the move.<\/p>\n “There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation,” Pritzker said.<\/p>\n Abbott, a Republican, has said he “fully authorized” the deployment.\u00a0<\/p>\n “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said on X.<\/p>\n Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has also sent the National Guard to Washington DC, where he said crime was “out of control,” despite claims to the contrary from the city’s officials.<\/p>\n All of the cities Trump has sent or has threatened to send troops to fight allegedly high crime<\/a> are run by\u00a0Democrats<\/a>.<\/p>\n Edited by: Rana Taha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late Sunday, a judge issued an order blocking the\u00a0deployment of troops to the US city of Portland, Oregon.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-193156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Trump’s critics say he is using authoritarian tactics to seize power and defy court ordersImage: John Rudoff\/REUTERS<\/p>\n