Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act as Minnesota anti-ICE protests grow
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A protester covers a tear gas canister used by federal agents during an immigration raid in Minneapolis.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump threatened on Jan 15 to deploy the military to Minnesota amid escalating tension over the deployment of federal agents in the state’s most populous city, which has become the focus of daily clashes.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Mr Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Mr Trump’s threat on social media came on the heels of the shooting by a US immigration officer of a Venezuelan man fleeing a traffic stop in Minneapolis on Jan 14, one week after the fatal shooting of a US citizen.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown, said that during the Jan 14 incident
The Insurrection Act is a law authorising the president to deploy military forces on US soil.
It has been used 30 times in US history, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. The Supreme Court has ruled that the president alone can determine if the act’s conditions have been met.
The law was last invoked in 1992 by then President George H.W. Bush at the request of the Republican governor of California, who was facing unprecedented riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers who had beaten Mr Rodney King, a black motorist, the previous year.
Democratic state and local leaders in Minnesota have condemned the federal presence there, saying it has wreaked havoc on their communities. The Trump administration has defended it as necessary to remove migrants living illegally in the US.
“No matter what led up to this incident, the situation we are seeing in our city is not sustainable,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey posted on X early on Jan 15.
Mr Trump for years threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he has called “the strongest power a president has”, but has yet to follow through.
His latest comments indicate it has emerged as an option to carry out his months-long effort to exert greater federal control over Democrat-run cities and states. Implementing the law would enable Mr Trump to circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the US military to enforce domestic laws.
The president said in December he was withdrawing the National Guard
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again,” he posted on Dec 31.
In December, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency request by the Trump administration to keep National Guard troops in Chicago. Mr Trump’s team argued they were necessary to maintain order and help support sweeping federal immigration raids. The decision could bolster legal challenges to other Guard deployments. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
