Donald Trump has secured command of the Oregon National Guard as he seeks to deploy troops in Portland.

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold a lower-court ruling on Monday that prevented Trump from taking command of the 200 Oregon National Guard troops, who typically report to the state's governor.

The judges on the panel ruled 2 - 1 that the president was likely to succeed on his claim that he had the authority to federalize the troops based on a determination he was unable to enforce the laws without them.

They cited the violence of protesters in front of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland as a justification for implementing the early 20th century statute that allows the president to take command of the Guard.

The judges noted in their unsigned order that the protesters 'attempted to burn the building down, placed chains on the doors, attempted to breach the front door of the building and broke the front glass door.' 

Protesters also threw 'rocks, sticks and a mortar and launched M80 fireworks at federal officers, assaulted federal officers, shined lasers at officers' eyes and doxed federal officers,' the judges wrote.

Their decision now puts on hold a lower-court ruling that prohibited Trump from calling up the troops so he could send them to Portland.

However, US District Judge Karin Immergut's second order prohibiting Trump from sending any National Guard members to Oregon at all remains in effect, meaning that no troops may immediately be deployed.

But the Trump administration has argued that because the legal reasoning underpinning both temporary restraining orders was the same, the second one was also invalid.

Lawyers for the government noted that the majority opinion on Monday said the two TROs 'rise or fall together,' as they asked Immergut to immediately dissolve her second order.

They argued that it is not the role of the courts to second-guess the president´s determination about when to deploy troops.

'The Ninth Circuit´s decision staying the first TRO is a significant change in law that plainly warrants dissolution of this Court´s second TRO,' the administration's lawyers wrote.

Still, the White House celebrated the ruling, with Trump spokeswoman Abigail Jackson saying the president 'is exercising his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel following violent riots that local leaders have refused to address,' according to the Wall Street Journal. 

The administration has said the troops are needed to protect federal property from protesters, and that having to send extra Department of Homeland Security agents to help guard the property meant they were not enforcing immigration laws elsewhere.

Oregon officials, meanwhile, have argued that Portland police have handled the protests and crowd control outside of the ICE facility appropriately, and have said that demonstrators who break the law are regularly arrested.

The small nightly protests, limited to a single block, have been ongoing since June.

At times, larger crowds including counter-protesters and live streamers, have shown up and federal agents have had to deploy tear gas to disperse the crowds. 

But in her decision, Immergut said the president's claims about Portland being war-torn are 'simply untethered to the facts.'

Judge Susan Graber, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, concurred as she issued her dissenting opinion on Monday. 

'Given Portland protesters' well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority's ruling, which accepts the government's characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,' she wrote.

Graber then urged her colleagues on the 9th Circuit to 'to vacate the majority´s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur.'

'In the two weeks leading up to the President´s September 27 social media post, there had not been a single incident of protesters´ disrupting the execution of the laws,' Graber wrote. 'It is hard to understand how a tiny protest causing no disruptions could possibly satisfy the standard that the President is unable to execute the laws.'

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, said he will now ask for a broader panel of the appeals to reconsider the decision.

'Today´s ruling, if allowed to stand, would give the president unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification,' Rayfield said. 'We are on a dangerous path in America.'

Yet Trump's efforts to deploy National Guard troops in Democratic-led cities have been mired in legal challenges.

In California, a judge ruled that his deployment of thousands of National Guard troops in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a longstanding law that generally prohibits the use of the military for civilian policing.

Still, the Trump administration is seeking to move full-steam ahead with its plans, asking the US Supreme Court on Friday to allow the deployment of National Guard troops to the Chicago area.