PORTLAND, OR – The city of Portland, state leaders and hundreds of Oregon and California National Guard troops are in legal limbo as federal courts determine the legality of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to federalize and deploy Guard troops to U.S. cities.

Trump and his administration have not as of Monday afternoon asked a federal appeals court to overrule a temporary restraining order blocking him from sending National Guard troops from any state and Washington D.C. to Portland, though they did appeal Sunday for a stay on an earlier, narrower order blocking the mobilization of Oregon’s National Guard.

“We’re in wait mode…” Jenny Hansson, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice, said via text Monday morning. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has not had direct communication from Trump or his officials since last Sunday, Elisabeth Shepard, a Kotek spokesperson, said in an email.

Federal Circuit Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, issued the two-week restraining order against federal troop deployment to Portland in an emergency hearing Sunday night.

Under Immergut’s Sunday ruling, no troops can be mobilized to Portland until Oct. 19. She scheduled a check-in for Oct. 17 and a hearing on the merits of the state’s case for Oct. 29.

During Sunday’s hearing, Immergut said the Trump administration was directly contravening an order she had made just a day earlier blocking the federal government from mobilizing Oregon National Guard troops to Portland. On Saturday, she barred the Trump administration from mobilizing200 Oregon Guard soldiers for 14 days while the lawsuit proceeded. The administration promptly moved to send 200 California Guard members to Oregon, with some arriving by Sunday morning. By Sunday evening, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the federalization of 400 Texas Guard to go to Portland, Chicago and “other locations.”

Trump has claimed in recent weeks that Portland is a “war zone,” “like World War II” and said he wants to send federal troops to guard federal buildings and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement  processing facility south of downtown Portland that has seen small and mostly non-violent protests for the last few months.

Immergut found that the protests in Portland are not by any definition a “rebellion” nor do they pose the “danger of a rebellion,” and that officials of the federal government “have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”

An unnamed Pentagon spokesperson did not answer questions about whether any Texas Guard troops had been deployed to Oregon since Hegseth announced they’d be federalized Sunday night or how many of the California Guard troops deployed Saturday by Trump were yet in Oregon.

Kotek said on Sunday at least 101 had been sent to Guard Camp Withycombe, about 20 miles from Portland. In Warrenton, 200 Oregon Guard members have been waiting for nearly a week to learn if they have a legitimate and legal mission from the federal government, or can be sent home.

The spokesperson in an email directed the Capital Chronicle to a “Federal Protection Mission” site page, where news releases hadn’t been updated in three days. When pressed for more recent updates, the spokesperson wrote: “We have no additional information or updates to provide at this time.”

Protests since Trump attempted his federal deployment have grown to about 100 demonstrators each night and remained mostly peaceful. That changed on Saturday evening, when Federal Protective Services, Department of Homeland Security and ICE police moved aggressively to disperse about 100 mostly peaceful protestors down a city block with chemical irritants that Portland’s Mayor Keith Wilson called “beyond the pale.”

Portland City Attorney Robert Taylor on Monday sent a letter to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice outlining the excessive force witnessed and accusing the administration of engaging in “prohibited viewpoint discrimination” by targeting demonstrators based on the content of their speech, while providing special access to the ICE facility for social media “influencers” who favor the federal administration.

The letter was in response to an investigation launched by the Department of Justice after Portland Police arrested 27-year-old right-wing social media figure Nicholas Sortor of Washington, D.C., for disorderly conduct during a fight outside the ICE facility. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said Monday it was not pursuing charges against Sortor.

Taylor also asked the Civil Rights Division to investigate what he said is the federal government’s violation of Portlanders’ First and Fourth Amendment Rights, protecting free speech and prohibiting unlawful search and seizure.

“If the Civil Rights Division is concerned about the Constitution, the Civil Rights Division should ensure that all people — even those with whom the administration disagrees — receive the equal protection of the First and Fourth Amendments,” he wrote. “At present, it appears the Civil Rights Division is failing that solemn duty in Portland and elsewhere in America.”

This story first appeared on Oregon Capital Chronicle.