Who is Karin Immergut, the Trump-appointed judge who ruled against his push to deploy troops in Oregon?

By Michael Williams, CNN

(CNN) — The federal judge in Oregon who ruled against President Donald Trump by temporarily blocking his push to deploy troops to Portland has received bipartisan praise throughout her career and has issued rulings that could be viewed as benefiting both left- and right-wing causes.

US District Judge Karin Immergut on Saturday issued a ruling that temporarily prevented the Trump administration from federalizing and deploying Oregon National Guard troops to protect an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that has been the focus of recent protests in Portland.

The Trump administration has portrayed the protests as violent riots that needs to be quelled by the military, while officials in Oregon have said that state and local law enforcement are capable of responding and that the push to introduce troops to the city could ratchet up tensions.

In her ruling, Immergut said state and city officials “provide(d) substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days—or even weeks—leading up to the President’s directive” ordering the deployment of troops to Oregon late last month.

The administration responded to Immergut’s ruling by attempting to deploy National Guard troops from California to Oregon.

In a second ruling on Sunday, Immergut expanded on her earlier order, temporarily blocking the administration from deploying troops from any state to Portland, and pointedly questioning an administration attorney over what she characterized as an attempt to circumvent her earlier order.

Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller described Immergut’s rulings as “legal insurrection,” while the president said over the weekend the judge “ought to be ashamed of himself,” misstating the judge’s gender.

Immergut was appointed by Trump to the federal bench during the president’s first term. She has received endorsements from both Democrats and Republicans and even assisted in the investigation that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

Her doggedness as a prosecutor earned her a nickname from Portland cops

Immergut was born in Brooklyn and received her bachelor’s degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1982 and her juris doctor from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1987, according to her district court biography.

Immergut has said her experience with big-city crime partly inspired her to pursue a career in law.

“Growing up in a city like that, you become very attuned to crime at an early age and are constantly vigilant,” Immergut said in a 2004 profile for the Oregon State Bar. “What interested me was what makes people do that, and how should society deal with it. That led me to be a lawyer.”

After graduating law school, she worked in private practice as a litigation associate in Washington, DC, for about a year before moving to Los Angeles to work as a federal prosecutor, primarily trying cases related to narcotics and money laundering.

She then briefly moved back across the country to Vermont to work again in private practice before relocating to Oregon, where she worked as a prosecutor in Multnomah County.

Portland police detectives called her “The Stalker” for her persistence, according to the Oregon State Bar profile.

She grilled Monica Lewinsky, but feared being branded ‘part of the right-wing conspiracy’

In 1998, Immergut took time off from her job as a Multnomah County prosecutor to work for special counsel Ken Starr, who had spent years investigating various controversies related to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Her time working for Starr was brief, but she served a critical role in questioning White House intern Monica Lewinsky about her relationship with the president. Clinton’s denial of the relationship formed the basis of his impeachment, but he was eventually acquitted by the Senate.

Immergut was tasked with questioning Lewinsky about precise aspects of her and Clinton’s sexual relationship.

Immergut insisted the investigation was about Clinton’s lying, not his sex life, and said she did not enter the job with any preconceived ideas about the president.

“I’m a pretty apolitical person,” she told The Oregonian in late 1998. “I felt that being conservative or liberal had nothing to do with it. I didn’t go in with any anti-Clinton bias.”

Speaking during a 1999 panel, Immergut said she nearly turned down the offer to work with Starr because she was worried about the stigma of working on an investigation that was widely perceived as a right-wing scheme against Clinton.

“I thought I would never get a job again,” she said, according to an Associated Press report from the time. “People thought I was crazy because I would be branded part of the right wing conspiracy.”

Other notable jobs and rulings

Immergut returned to her job in Multnomah County for a few years after the Clinton case, before moving on to become a federal prosecutor for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon. She moved into the top role at that office after President George W. Bush nominated her in 2003.

In 2009, Immergut was appointed by Oregon’s governor as a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge. She served in this position until being nominated as a federal judge by Trump in 2019.

As a federal judge, Immergut has issued rulings that could be viewed positively by both Democrats and Republicans.

In August, she ruled in favor of the Department of Homeland Security, determining the agency’s detention of a 25-year-old Guatemalan man seeking asylum was lawful, though she also ordered the government to immediately refer the man to an asylum officer.

In 2021, she dismissed a lawsuit filed by street medics who were injured by federal officers during protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020.

In 2023, she upheld an Oregon law banning large-capacity magazines and requiring permits to purchase guns.

CNN’s Karenia Murry contributed to this report.

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