Trial over whether Trump legally deployed troops to Portland begins

By Jack Queen and Dietrich Knauth

(Reuters) -A trial began on Wednesday in Portland, Oregon to determine whether President Donald Trump lawfully ordered the National Guard to the city to quell protests, a test of his controversial use of military force in U.S. cities.

A federal judge will decide whether protests at an immigration facility in the city constituted a rebellion or prevented federal agents from enforcing the law, justifying the troop deployment, in what appears to be the first time the use of the law has been tested in a trial.

The deployment was a rare break with a centuries-old taboo against using troops on American soil.

Portland's attorney Caroline Turco said at the trial that the evidence will show that protests in Portland were not violent and did not justify the deployment of the National Guard.

"This case is about whether we are a nation of constitutional law or martial law," Turco said.

U.S. Justice Department attorney Eric Hamilton said National Guard troops are needed after a summer of protests has impeded immigration enforcement efforts.

"For months, agitators have used violence and threatened violence against the men and women who served our country by working for the Department of Homeland Security here in Oregon," Hamilton said.

CLAIMS OF VIOLENCE

The City of Portland and the Oregon attorney general’s office sued the Trump administration and accused it of acting unlawfully by moving to deploy troops, based on exaggerated claims of violence at protests against Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Portland is one of several Democrat-led cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, where the Republican president has deployed troops in recent months in response to what he describes as out-of-control protests disrupting the work of federal immigration agents.

Democrats have said the president is abusing his military powers.

The Portland trial before U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut does not include a jury.

STARKLY DIFFERENT PICTURES

Each side is expected to call witnesses and present documents to support their starkly different pictures of the protests, which began in June and have centered on an immigration detention facility.

Demonstrators have mostly been peaceful but have periodically clashed with agents and police seeking to clear them out.

Justice Department lawyers in a Tuesday court filing said protesters had thrown rocks at officers, blocked entry to the ICE facility and engaged in vandalism. The filing said federal officers protecting the site are stretched thin and accused Portland police of mounting an inadequate response.

Oregon's lawyers countered that the protests were relatively minor and do not appear to have impeded immigration enforcement. They said in a Tuesday filing that the protests did not require a major police response and that the federal government had ample resources to contain them.

A federal judge in California found in September that the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles this summer violated a different law prohibiting troops from doing domestic police work.

(Reporting by Jack Queen and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Tom Hals, David Holmes and Bill Berkrot)