Scott Asphaug, who also worked under Immergut during her time as Oregon’s chief federal prosecutor, said she told her team to “do the right thing for the right reason”.
“Our job was not simply to win,” he said. “Our job was to act in a judicious and just manner.”
Police and federal officers throw gas canisters to disperse protesters near a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.Credit: AP
In an emergency hearing on Sunday night, Immergut clarified her restraining order, barring the administration from sending in National Guard troops from any other state. Having already ruled that Trump lacked a legal basis for sending the military, she warned the administration could be “in direct contravention” of her order, citing reports that troops from Texas and California could soon be on their way.
“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she asked. “Why is this appropriate?”
Like Immergut, Williams was working out of the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in downtown Portland in the summer of 2020. That was when Attorney General Bill Barr sent federal agents to Portland to deal with crowds who had gathered around the courthouse to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.
Williams said that while parts of downtown Portland did resemble a “war zone” in 2020, the circumstances of the current protests, which are smaller in scale and concentrated around an ICE building in South Portland, were “vastly different”.
A protester confronts police during a protest near an ICE facility in Portland on Monday.Credit: AP
“I don’t fault ICE for doing their work,” he said. “I believe in law and order. And people get to protest it, so long as that’s done in a lawful manner. It’s a careful balance.”
Immergut’s ruling, he said, “was based on the facts of 2025, not 2020; what’s happening now is nothing like what happened then”.
The judge has not yet made a final ruling on the merits of the case. Her temporary restraining order will expire this month, and a trial is scheduled in Portland for the morning of October 29.
The Trump administration has appealed Immergut’s initial ruling to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
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And on social media, Miller is not letting Immergut’s conservative background interfere with his attacks on the legitimacy of her rulings. Her order, he wrote, amounted to an attempt to “nullify the 2024 election by fiat”. On Monday, he called her a “district court judge with no conceivable authority, whatsoever, to restrict the President”, and an “Oregon judge”.
On Sunday, Trump addressed his selection of Immergut more directly, telling reporters that “if they put judges like that on, I wasn’t well served by the people who picked judges”.
But while he seemed to be cognisant of the fact that one of his nominees had ruled against him, his awareness did not extend to that judge’s gender. Trump repeatedly referred to Immergut as “he” and “him”.
“That judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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