Portions of this story were written by Oregon Public Broadcasting staff.
President Donald Trump said he’s dropping — for now — his push to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, a move that comes after legal roadblocks hung up the effort.
Trump said in a social media post Wednesday that he’s removing the Guard troops for now. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time!” he wrote.
Troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration. They had been sent to Chicago and Portland but were never on the streets as legal challenges played out.
In his post, Trump claimed that crime rates had gone down in those cities due to the deployment.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson disputed the president’s version of events.
“Portland’s substantial reduction in crime and violence is credited entirely to the hard work of the Portland Police Bureau, Office of Violence Prevention, innovative public safety programs and community leaders across the city,” Wilson said in a statement. “We are not clear on the claims made in this social media post, as National Guard troops were garrisoned locally but never deployed in Portland.”
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said her office was processing the news.
“My office has not yet received official notification that the remaining federalized Oregon National Guard troops can return home,“ Kotek said in a statement to OPB. ”They were never lawfully deployed to Portland and there was no need for their presence. If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops, that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.”
The president has made a crackdown on crime in cities a centerpiece of his second term — and has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop his opponents from using the courts to block his plans.
He has said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In November, U.S. Northern Command had said it was "shifting and/or rightsizing" operations in Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles, but there would be a “constant, enduring and long-term presence in each city.”
Trump’s push to deploy the troops in Democrat-led cities has been met with legal challenges at nearly every turn.
The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area as part of its crackdown on immigration. The order was not a final ruling but was a significant and rare setback by the high court for the president’s efforts.
In the nation’s capital, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued to halt the deployments of more than 2,000 guardsmen.
Hundreds of troops from California and Oregon were deployed to Portland, but a federal judge barred them from going on the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there in November after a three-day trial.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said Portland never saw troops “because the law prevailed.”
“We’re grateful for the professionalism of the Guard members caught in the middle of this legal fight,” Rayfield said in a statement. “This outcome shows that standing up for the Constitution works.”
Rayfield, a Democrat elected in 2024, said if the federal government tries to revisit the effort to send troops to Portland “we are prepared to respond — again — in court.”
According to Lt. Col. Stephen Bomar, a spokesman for the Oregon Military Department, 100 Oregon National Guard members remained deployed on Wednesday. That is half the initial 200-member deployment ordered up by Trump in late September.
The troops have been stationed at Camp Rilea — on the state’s North Coast — and at Camp Withycombe in suburban Clackamas County, Bomar said.
The OMD could not offer a timeline for how quickly the Oregon troops would be deactivated. Bomar said that would be up to U.S. Northern Command, which has authority over the deployment. He said deactiviation would likely require a trip to a base in Texas.
Bomar also said the OMD did not have an idea of how much the roughly four-month troop activation would cost taxpayers. The department estimated in September that a 60-day deployment of 200 National Guard troops would cost upwards of $3.8 million. The U.S. government will ultimately foot the bill for the scuttled deployment.
The Trump administration also sent 200 California National Guard troops to Oregon, after being blocked in court from deploying Oregon National Guard members. Those troops left the state in November.
California National Guard troops were removed from the streets of Los Angeles by Dec. 15 after a court ruling. But an appeals court had paused a separate part of the order that required control of the Guard to return to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In a Tuesday court filing, the Trump administration said it was no longer seeking a pause in that part of the order. That paves the way for the California National Guard troops to fully return to state control after Trump federalized the Guard in June.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the development a “major litigation victory” in a press release Wednesday.
“For six months, California National Guard troops have been used as political pawns by a President desperate to be king,” Bonta said. “There is a reason our founders decided military and civilian affairs must be kept separate; a reason that our military is, by design, apolitical.”
Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September to combat crime, a move supported by the state’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee and senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the use of the Guard, siding with Democratic state and local officials who sued.
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Associated Press writer Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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