Time and Again, Judge Finds Feds’ Testimony Difficult to Believe

The 106-page order U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut issued Friday evening has a light but remarkable refrain: Arguments and testimony presented by the federal government were not credible.

Immergut rejected federal officers’ claims that Portland Police didn’t answer their calls. She doubted the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement regional director’s account of severe damage to the Portland ICE building. And perhaps most consequentially, the judge directly challenged the feds’ general characterization of the protests that have taken place over months on Portland’s South Waterfront.

The defendants, wrote Judge Immergut at one point, “overstate the degree of physical danger they faced at the ICE facility.”

Immergut, in her order, did not dismiss federal officials’ accounts outr