FILE PHOTO: A Federal Protective Service police officer guards the gate of a ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, U.S. October 26, 2025. REUTERS/John Rudoff/File Photo

By Jack Queen and Dietrich Knauth

(Reuters) -Portland police testified on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's order to deploy National Guard troops in their city inflamed protests and increased violence, as a court held a trial over whether the troop deployment was legal.

The Portland trial, before U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, will be the first time a judge weighs evidence about whether protests at an immigration facility constituted a rebellion or prevented federal agents from enforcing the law in a way that justified a military deployment. The trial will not involve a jury.

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

Portland police Commander Franz Schoening testified that protests were mild in September, but grew larger after Trump's announcement that troops were headed to the city.

Even with larger protests, little violence was directed at federal officers, who sometimes used excessive force to drive protests away from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in the city, Schoening said.

In one incident on October 18, federal officers tried to fire tear gas or smoke from a launcher at protesters in the driveway of the ICE building, but they missed and the tear gas cannister skipped up onto the roof of the ICE building, Schoening said. Federal officers on the roof started retaliating by firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, hitting local police officers as well as protesters, Schoening said.

The use of tear gas, in particular, was "startling", and it would be impermissible for local police under Oregon law, Schoening said.

After large protests in Portland in 2020, Oregon passed laws preventing police from using tear gas for crowd control unless confronted by "a riot." Shoening said protests have not reached that level since mid-June.

Portland's attorney Caroline Turco said during opening statements on Wednesday that the evidence will show that protests in Portland were not violent and did not justify 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 cities led by Democrats, including Los Angeles and Chicago, where the Republican president has deployed troops in recent months, citing what he describes as out-of-control protests disrupting federal immigration enforcement.

Democrats have said the president is abusing his military powers.

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, Bill Berkrot and Noeleen Walder and David Gregorio)