Federal lawyers admit errors in officer deployment numbers to Portland ICE building

Federal government lawyers Monday acknowledged making two errors in sworn declarations presented to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the extent of the federal officers’ “surge” to protect Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

Robert Cantu, deputy director of the Federal Protective Service Region 10 that covers Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska, said that the region had to assign 115 Federal Protective Service officers from other areas around the country to Portland to “maintain a 24/7 operational tempo,” at the building since June.

The new brief clarifies that 115 was the “number of deployments,” not individual officers sent, and there’s actually been a total of 86 Federal Protective Service officers sent to the building from other regions.

In trying to clear up that mistake that attorneys for the state of Oregon highlighted last week, the federal government admitted another error: The government was wrong to state that it was “undisputed” that nearly a “quarter” of the agency’s entire Federal Protective Service had been redirected to Portland “due to the unrest there.”

Only about 13 % of the agency’s inspectors were reassigned to Portland since June, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Andrew M. Bernie wrote to the court.

In a filing Monday to the 9th Circuit, Bernie apologized for the inaccurate information provided in sworn declarations and briefs.

Federal government lawyers “take with the utmost seriousness their obligation to provide the Court with accurate and up-to-date information, and we deeply regret these errors,” he wrote.

Last week, the state asked the 9th Circuit to throw out its Oct. 20 ruling that sided with the Trump administration based on the misrepresentation of facts the federal government provided.

Only a fraction of the 115 Federal Protective Service officers claimed to have been reassigned “was ever” in Portland at any given time, with 31 at the most in the city from July 15 through Aug. 12, lawyers from the state wrote.

Last week’s ruling by the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, which had opened the door to a federal deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland, was placed on hold until at least 5 p.m. Tuesday as the appellate court’s 29 active judges decide whether to vote to reconsider the panel’s decision.

The three-judge panel found that the president is due significant deference and that his decision to mobilize 200 Oregon National Guard members for 60 days to Portland was a “measured response” to protests at the ICE office. The federal government had argued that its redeployment of other federal officers to the Portland site was “unsustainable.”

Meanwhile, all sides are preparing for a three-day trial set to start Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut on the merits underlying the lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon and city of Portland and state of California challenging any federal deployment of any National Guard to Oregon.