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The 106-page order U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut issued Friday evening has a light but remarkable refrain: Arguments and testimony presented by the federal government were not credible.
Immergut rejected federal officers’ claims that Portland Police didn’t answer their calls. She doubted the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement regional director’s account of severe damage to the Portland ICE building. And perhaps most consequentially, the judge directly challenged the feds’ general characterization of the protests that have taken place over months on Portland’s South Waterfront.
The defendants, wrote Judge Immergut at one point, “overstate the degree of physical danger they faced at the ICE facility.”
Immergut, in her order, did not dismiss federal officials’ accounts outright. She at times drew directly on their testimony to forge the narrative of events that formed the backbone of the final judgment in State of Oregon v. Trump, in which she determined, given the evidence aired at trial, that the Trump administration has failed to establish a legal basis for sending in the National Guard to Portland—an action it has been pining for more than a month now to take.
The question, rather, was to whose perspectives the judge gave narrative weight. And time and again, she extended it to testimony from the officers of the Portland Police Bureau, and seemed skeptical of testimony from the feds.
That proved consequential since, as WW has reported, the trial largely hinged on police perceptions of Portland. And what Immergut repeatedly determined was that federal law enforcement officials perceived—or at least described—the world outside the ICE building as more violent and threatening than it actually was.
Asked about concerns that the Trump administration has misled the public about Portland, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement Saturday: “Rioters in Portland have been charged for crimes including arson and assaulting police officers—this isn’t a peaceful protest that’s under control, like many on the left have claimed, it’s radical violence."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the Federal Protective Service, did not respond to questions.
Immergut based her credibility judgments on a number of factors.
Qualitative observations played some role. “This Court had the opportunity to evaluate Commander Schoening’s demeanor and testimony and found it to be highly credible and affords it great weight,” Immergut wrote of one longtime Portland Police Bureau officer who testified.
The judge’s assessments also had a practical bent—and not always with results to which the feds would necessarily object.
For example, in one footnote, the judge wrote that when local and federal crowd size estimates diverge, she “finds the PPB reporting more credible” for two reasons: PPB has much more experience in managing and estimating the size of large crowds, and its estimates tended to include a greater geographical area than those of the feds. (As a result, PPB crowd estimates tended larger.)
But in the major areas of disagreement, Immergut’s credibility analysis came down to consistency and corroborating evidence.
Take, for example, the question of whether federal officers, in their times of need, could rely on the Portland Police Bureau.
“As related to the time period immediately before the President’s callout of the National Guard, this Court heard testimony from FPS officers that PPB does not respond to their requests and that FPS stopped calling PPB altogether,” Immergut wrote. Citing clear evidence to the contrary, she wrote that the “Court does not find this testimony to be credible. FPS did call PPB for help, and PPB routinely responded to these calls for help.”
Or take the June 14 protests, the culmination of days of contentious demonstrations on which the feds placed great emphasis.
No witness denied the day could have gone better. Portland police ultimately declared a riot. And Immergut accepted several basic nuggets from representatives of the federal government: Protesters around this period threw bricks and rocks at federal officers and damaged the ICE building, she found, disabling card readers, breaking glass on one of its doors with a barbell and stop sign pole and placing chains on a door as well.
And yet even here, Immergut noted discrepancies that caused her to question the testimony of a prominent area Trump administration official.
Cammilla Wamsley, who directs ICE in the region, testified that she came to survey the damage at Portland ICE, and “all of the windows on the first floor and some on the second and third floor were broken,” as were “all” of the entry doors.
This description of the damage, Immergut noted, went notably beyond that of other federal officers who testified.
Another question was whether protesters entered the ICE facility itself. Here, again, the feds internally diverged. Immergut pointed out that the two FPS officers described “attempted breaches” of the facility, but again, Wamsley went farther, stating that on some unspecified date, protesters actually got into the building lobby.
“The Court has already discussed the reasons it does not find reliable Director Wamsley’s testimony on damage to the ICE facility,” Judge Immergut wrote. “The Court extends that finding to Director Wamsley’s testimony on breach of the facility because it is inconsistent with every other piece of evidence received on the subject. The Court therefore finds that protesters never breached the ICE facility.”
Reasons for doubt went on. Where, on June 14, feds reported they were barricaded in the building, a Portland Police officer noted a door through which federal officials were in fact regularly going in and out. Where feds that day reported a “fire,” the court found that in fact this referred to candles lit for a vigil set up by demonstrators.
And for all of their emphasis on the challenges of mid-June, Immergut noted, the feds furnished no photos or security footage documenting what took place.
Of course, whatever occurred that month, it was of limited legal relevance to Trump’s decision to call in the troops in late September.
Thus much of the trial hinged on a broader narrative debate: Who were these protesters, how did they organize and how did they behave over time.
No protesters were consulted at trial. But there were multiple well-known narratives in the mix.
On one pole was the story frequently trumpeted by the U.S. president, who stated, for example, in a Truth Social Post that “ANTIFA and the Radical Left Anarchists have been viciously attacking our Federal Law Enforcement Officers.”
Federal officers at trial echoed aspects of this basic account, though in tamer terms. Their testimony conjured a threat of at-least-loosely organized criminal protesters wielding sticks and bats and other weapons, occasionally assaulting and often yelling deeply hurtful invectives at officers seeking to protect federal property and operations, in turn straining federal resources, morale and mental health.
Immergut, reviewing the evidence, concluded that, with the exception of peaceful marches, the protesters were not in fact organized, weapons were rarely seen, and that on balance federal officers faced no extraordinary dangers.
“If a life-threatening danger to a federal officer alone created the risk of rebellion, then it would seem the President could call up the National Guard every day,” the judge wrote, noting that such a hazard comes with the law enforcement trade.
In any event, she went on, the feds overstated the danger they faced: In the months preceding the president’s federalization, she documented sporadic and isolated threats and incidents of violence that did not cause serious injuries to federal officers, but found protests outside the Portland ICE facility to have been predominately peaceful.
She drew this conclusion partly from documents revealed at trial, and also in large part from the testimonies of Portland police who, the judge noted, have substantial experience in crowd management. In the end, Immergut more or less adopted their analysis as her own.
“The PPB witnesses, all of whom this Court found credible based on their experience on the ground in Portland, their demeanor while testifying, and the exhibits which corroborate their testimony, described generally peaceful crowds after June 14 up to September 27,” Immergut wrote. “By September,” she went on, “the energy of the protests reached its lowest point.”
Immergut’s written final judgment arrived a week after the conclusion of the trial. But even during the proceedings themselves, the credibility of the feds at times was called into question.
Pressed to confirm that his prior statement that 115 FPS officers had come to the ICE facility was not in fact true, a federal official acknowledged, “It wasn’t correct.” In fact, he stated from the witness stand, the number was lower, and his agency had provided him with inaccurate information.
Sometimes, credibility doubts went beyond individual testimony to the apparatus of the Trump administration itself.
At trial, for example, it emerged that a small contingent of National Guard members remained at the Portland ICE facility for several hours after Immergut had first issued a Oct. 4 restraining order blocking the deployment.
In her judgment Friday, Immergut said the federal government violated her restraining order.
Ordinarily she would be inclined to accept the feds’ explanation that it took time to “convey the message” about the order to the troops on the ground in Portland.
The issue, Immergut wrote, was this: While that message was apparently delayed, at the same time, federal officials were able to convey a message to the U.S. Army Northern Command to send 200 federalized California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles to Portland. (She later blocked this deployment, too.)
“In other words,” Immergut wrote in her judgment, “Defendants had time to order and coordinate the transport of federalized California National Guardsmen from Los Angeles to Portland but needed more time to communicate with the Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility.”
Immergut hasn’t issued a finding that the federal government was in contempt of court. “However,” she wrote, “this Court expects Defendants will provide further explanation when ordered to do so by this Court in the future.”
