Judges with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled in favor of ICE, and the Trump Administration’s ability to protect federal agents.
Detractors of the President’s deportation plan have constantly attempted to hamstring federal officers, limiting the tools at their disposal to do the job.
And one of those high-profile attempts to de-claw ICE just hit a 2-1 wall!
In fact, there were TWO DIFFERENT 2-1 decisions handed down by the panel of Judges in related cases — and both sided with the Trump Administration.
Both cases stemmed from the hundreds of violent mobs (
…this is where the mainstream media usually uses the phrase ‘mostly peaceful protests’…) at the ICE facility in Portland.
You can check out this report filed back in November of last year if you forgot how dangerous that situation was, as reported by the local NBC affiliate out of Portland:
There were two primary legal battles launched against ICE as a result of those protests.
One had to do with the ‘right’ of nearby residents of an apartment building to be protected from the fallout of those not-so-peaceful protests.
And the second took the form of limiting what weaponry and crowd dispersal tools federal agents could use, and under what circumstances.
In March of this year, a District Judge in Oregon put massive restrictions on ICE Agents in how they utilized those tools, as reported by Fox News at the time:
OUTRAGEOUS: Oregon U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio (Biden appointed) has RULED to severely limit DHS from deploying tear gas and other chemical munitions against radical anti-ICE protesters outside the Portland detention facility in a major win for ACLU-backed plaintiffs.
pic.twitter.com/ZvtK8lL02D
— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress)
March 10, 2026
I should point out that District Judge Michael Simon was actually behind the more generalized limit on the use of tear gas.
And District Judge Amy Baggio, mentioned in the Fox News video shared above, is the judge who limited federal agents based on the possible spillover at the nearby apartment complex.
It just so happens that Judge Amy Baggio was also the Biden-appointed Judge who ordered the release of a MALE ILLEGAL who identified as female from federal detention in July of last year… because the Trump Administration RIGHTLY put HIM in a detention facility for MEN:
Odalis Jhonatan Martinez-Velasquez, a MALE illegal alien from Mexico, was placed into ICE’s male detention center in accordance with the President’s Executive Order and for the safety of women in ICE custody.
Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio recently ordered the…
pic.twitter.com/5xFAyOYIuC
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov)
July 18, 2025
So you already have a certain degree of progressive anti-Trump TDS to flavor this story.
Here’s the full text from that post shared by Homeland Security on X, for easier reading:
Odalis Jhonatan Martinez-Velasquez, a MALE illegal alien from Mexico, was placed into ICE’s male detention center in accordance with the President’s Executive Order and for the safety of women in ICE custody.
Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio recently ordered the release of Velasquez—ignoring the rule of law and promoting gender ideology fanaticism.
On January 20, President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order of Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, prohibiting DHS from detaining males in women’s detention centers. Velasquez is no exception.
But BOTH those District judges in Oregon just had their rulings thrown down by the 9th Circuit, according to this from
KATU, the ABC News affiliate out of Portland:
A panel of Ninth Circuit judges vacated major preliminary injunctions that previously barred federal officers’ use of non-lethal crowd-control measures like tear gas or pepper balls. It also applied strict limits on when and how they could deploy munitions near the Portland ICE facility.
In both decisions handed down Tuesday, the judges sided 2-1 with the Trump administration.
One of the cases against the government was filed by Jack Dickinson, known as the “Portland Chicken,” and journalists. Back on March 9, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited federal agents from deploying tear gas against the protesters unless there was a life-threatening situation.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit panel disagreed with several key points in the lower court’s ruling, saying that based on established legal precedent, officers do not need to wait for an imminent threat of physical harm before deploying non-lethal force to disperse disorderly crowds or restore order.
They also found no broad pattern or unwritten policy that targeted protesters or reporters for their viewpoints, instead describing those affected as “unfortunate collateral casualties” amid attempts to manage unruly and sometimes violent crowds.
The other legal challenge was filed by Reach Community Development, which owns Gray’s Landing, an apartment complex near the ICE facility. Residents who live there said tear gas deployed by federal agents seeped into their homes, causing health issues.
U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited federal agents from using chemical munitions that had the likelihood of reaching the complex.
The Ninth Circuit also vacated the injunction in that case, ruling that neither longstanding tradition nor constitutional text supported a substantive-due-process right to be free from government use of crowd-control chemicals, even when neighbors are incidentally affected. (Emphasis added.)
The 3-judge panel also got rid of a previous requirement concerning what federal agents had to WEAR, according to this from SCOTUS Wire on X:
NEW: In a 2-1 vote, the Ninth Circuit lifted court-ordered limits on federal agents' use of tear gas and other crowd-control weapons at protests outside a Portland ICE facility, along with a requirement that agents wear more visible identifying markings on their uniforms.
pic.twitter.com/AtzbHZEqvl
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire)
November 10, 2026
I should point out that I have a lot of compassion for the residents of the apartment complex that continually suffered from drifting tear gas and the like.
And I actually AGREE with one aspect of the owners of that apartment building — the residents should NOT have to put up with that!
But where I take issue, and where the 9th Circuit panel refuted that argument, has to do with whether or not the federal government or ICE bears the responsibility for that situation.
The owners of the apartment argue that innocent people in their apartment building are suffering as a result of the conflict at the nearby ICE facility, as reported by
KPTV, the Fox News affiliate out of Portland:
People living in the South Portland apartment building, Gray’s Landing, are disappointed after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the restriction on ICE agents’ use of chemical munitions near their home on Tuesday.
“REACH residents were being impacted. Health impacts, stress, inability to work, and so their livelihoods were at risk,” said REACH senior leader, Jackie Keogh.
“We had residents, single parents, who had to teach their children how to close the windows and put on a gas mask. We had folks who were planning to go grocery shopping after work and were hit by rubber bullets,” Keogh said.
Keogh is a senior leader at REACH, the nonprofit that owns the apartment building.
She said the chemical munitions were also triggering to the 33 military veterans living in the building.
“They came to these apartments seeking safety. And they were unable to find that given what was going on,” said Keogh.
From hiring security for more than nine months to glass replacement, Keogh says REACH has spent more than 600 thousand dollars to keep their residents safe and comfortable.
“REACH bore the brunt of this activity purely by being in this location,” Keogh said.
If you’re a well-adjusted mainstream news junkie… you might agree with the owners of the apartment building — putting the blame on ICE, and the Trump Administration.
But if you’re an independent thinker with basic critical thinking skills, and one of our regular readers, you can probably predict aforehand where I’m about to place the blame for that entire situation…
And for the unfortunate problems experienced by the residents of that apartment building.
Did ICE cause the disturbance — or are they simply attempting to do their jobs and HANDLE it, as the problems come at them, within the purview of their duty?
Those ‘mostly peaceful protests’, which oddly enough included a decent amount of VIOLENCE, were happening for one key reason.
Back in my days of liability investigations for insurance claims, I would have labeled that reason the ‘proximate cause’.
That’s the initial action (or neglectful INACTION) which set off the subsequent chain of events to begin with.
And that, as my critical-thinking friends will attest, falls right in the lap of the local and state Democrats who consistently CREATED the situation that ICE — and the Trump Administration — ultimately had to clean up.
The two judges who sided with ICE, against the District Judges’ rulings, said as much in their counter-rulings, as covered in this report from
Courthouse News:
“Simply put, plaintiffs lack a substantive due process right to be free from the government’s use of nonlethal crowd-control devices in response to disruptive demonstrations,” U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Tung, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote in the opinion for the case filed by residents.
“Under our precedent, law enforcement agents may use nonlethal force to clear crowds and restore order — they need not wait until they face ‘an imminent threat of physical harm,’’’ U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, a fellow Trump appointee, wrote in the journalists and protesters’ case.
Lee said the record doesn’t support the protesters’ claim the agents retaliated against them for exercising their First Amendment rights.
“Rather, the plaintiffs appear to be unfortunate collateral casualties of federal agents’ efforts to quell an unruly and sometimes violent crowd,” Lee wrote.
Between June 2025 and February 2026, there were at least 150 protests at the Portland ICE facility, some drawing crowds of several thousand.
Federal agents tasked with protecting the facility took to using tear gas and pepper balls to disperse crowds.
“The purported right to be free from exposure to gases released from non-lethal crowd-control devices in response to disruptive crowds is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history or tradition,” Tung wrote. “The deployment of non-lethal crowd-control devices to prevent violence from escalating and to protect federal property does not appear to us to shock the conscience.”
That doesn’t change the fact that the poor residents of that nearby apartment complex are stuck between a rock and a DEMOCRATIC-LED place.
But at least ICE doesn’t have to abide by an asinine court-ordered rules of engagement that makes their job even harder!
Still, the job isn’t complete.
ICE still has plenty of work left to do before the campaign promises of President Trump are fully realized.
With the latest round of voting and Congress flipped on it’s head, we’re already hearing rumblings of possible deal-making that could stall ICE’s work dead in its tracks.
I’ll take this victory for what it is.
But unless the Trump Administration regains its former fervor for FIXING the immigration situation in the US…
The ‘win’ handed down from the 9th circuit with these reversals could turn out to be as useless as spitting in the wind.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
