by Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle
October 30, 2025
On the second day of Oregon’s and the city of Portland’s trial against the federal government, lawyers from both sides took a line of questioning that went to the heart of staffing issues at the Federal Protective Service and its ability to keep a Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility safe from protests.
Whether the federal government has the security it needs to protect that building is a key question in the three-day trial, in which Oregon will seek to convince a judge President Donald Trump cannot legally deploy National Guard troops to Portland. Trump since September has sought to send hundreds of National Guard troops from Oregon and other states to the city he falsely claimed is “war ravaged.”
While federal attorneys sought to paint a picture of an agency that needed National Guard backup, lawyers for Portland and the state contended the federal government is using an ongoing structural staffing issue as pretext to deploy the military to Portland.
The bulk of Thursday’s questioning was directed at Robert Cantu, regional director for the Federal Protective Services in the Northwest. U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee presiding over the case, had allowed Cantu to testify under his initials “R.C.” but he is listed by his full unredacted name as a witness by the defense in public documents and named in multiple public court documents.
Cantu explained that agency leaders have for years asked for more staff, that he had to redirect staff to Portland to protect the ICE facility from protestors, and that typically there are just four federal police officers in Oregon meant to protect roughly 100 federal buildings.
But Oregon’s lawyers countered that the agency also contracts private officers from companies across the country to provide security for federal buildings, and that there are hundreds more private contracted guards at federal buildings than there are police who are federal employees. The private guards are able to detain, but not arrest, people for crimes at those facilities, Cantu clarified.
Oregon’s lawyers also argued that federal agencies are able to cross-designate law enforcement officers from several federal agencies to fill in other agencies’ gaps when needed. Brian Marshall, a senior assistant attorney general at the state justice department, pointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s website touting that the agency has 80,000 law enforcement officers across the U.S.
Marshall provided data showing that during the summer of 2020 when protests in downtown Portland were heightened, the Department of Homeland Security sent 576 of those law enforcement officers to the city. He asked why the agency didn’t do the same for the ICE facility.
Caroline Turco, senior deputy city attorney for the city of Portland, shared data showing that in the days leading up to Trump’s Sept. 27 declaration that troops were needed at the facility, there were about equal numbers of federal officers and protesters at the ICE facility. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/z8biU/2/
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Immergut asked Cantu several times if he or his boss had requested the ability to hire more staff given their concerns.
“I did not make that request for support. That is done above me,” he said.
Cantu and his boss were not told that Trump planned to deploy Guard troops, nor were they involved in any decision to deploy Oregon or California or Texas Guard to the building.
Cantu testified that he learned about all of those potential deployments on the news.
“I do not agree with the statement that Portland is burning down, no,” Cantu said, when asked if he agreed with the statement that had been used by the president to justify deployment.
Cantu, as well as a commander who provided only his initials, both at times praised the backup help they’ve received from Portland Police Bureau officers in controlling crowds at the facility and criticized the Portland police for the speed and scale of some responses.
Cantu said when protests grew at an ICE facility in Spokane earlier this summer, local police agencies sent 185 officers to help protect the building. He said the Portland Police Bureau was unlikely to offer such support
Cops gassed, costs rise
Since Trump declared he would send National Guard troops to Portland and protest activity increased, the Portland Police Bureau has spent nearly $900,000 extra on police and resources to help with crowd control and law enforcement, according to Craig Dobson, an assistant chief at the bureau.
Dobson expressed concern that federal officers and Guard members who could be deployed have little crowd control training. He was among Portland Police officers tear gassed by federal officers at a protest at the ICE facility on Oct. 18.
“My officers had to leave as well as state police — I watched them have to leave since they had no gas masks with them. Once it cleared the neighborhood — it was a large deployment of gas that effected several blocks — about half the crowd did come back into the area eventually,” he said.
Question of contempt
On Thursday, Immergut said there would be a bigger hearing “another time” about the federal government’s potential contempt of court for defying her temporary restraining order and briefly sending National Guard to the Portland ICE facility.
The revelation on Wednesday that Oregon Guard troops were sent to the facility from 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 4 and 12 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, in defiance of Immergut’s Oct. 4 temporary restraining order barring them, clearly bothered the judge. The guardsman remained at the facility 8 hours after Immergut had issued the first of two temporary restraining orders barring them.
Federal lawyers argued Thursday that the commanders who would have ordered the Guard troops to leave were on the East Coast and three hours ahead of Portland, so her Saturday afternoon restraining order would have reached them in the evening. Immergut said they could have gotten that message out, as the federal government began trying to send National Guard troops from California to Oregon almost immediately after her first order.
“The government deployed that very night knowing that I told you that I would issue you an opinion as quickly as I could over the weekend,” she said. “Does that not seem to be in bad faith in some way?”
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