WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces in Minnesota after days of angry protests over a surge in immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis.
Confrontations between residents and federal officers have become increasingly tense after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, in a car eight days ago in Minneapolis, and the protests have spread to other cities. Trump’s latest threat came a few hours after an immigration officer shot a Venezuelan man the government said was fleeing after agents tried to stop his vehicle in Minneapolis.
“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,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump, a Republican, has for weeks derided the state’s Democratic leaders and called the Somali community in the area “garbage” who should be “thrown out” of the country.
He has already sent nearly 3,000 federal officers into the Minneapolis area, who have carried guns through the city’s icy streets, wearing military-style camouflage gear and masks that hide their faces.
They have been met frequently by loud, often angry protests by residents, some blowing whistles or banging tambourines.
The agents have arrested both immigrants and protesters, at times smashing windows and pulling people from their cars, and have been shouted at for several episodes where they have stopped Black and Latino U.S. citizens and demanded identification.
‘DISGUSTING AND INTOLERABLE’
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing Trump’s immigration crackdown, said that just before Wednesday’s shooting, two people attacked the federal officer with a broomstick and snow shovel as he wrestled with the Venezuelan man on the ground outside a home he had been running towards.
The officer “fired defensive shots to defend his life,” the DHS statement said. The DHS said the man had been allowed into the U.S. by the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, in 2022 through the government’s humanitarian parole program.
The Trump administration, which has sought to revoke Biden-era immigration and asylum programs, accused him of being in the country illegally.
Reuters was not able to verify the account given by DHS.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters at a late-night press conference that the FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were gathering evidence from the scene. The man’s injuries were not life-threatening and he was recovering in hospital, O’Hara said.
Speaking alongside O’Hara, Mayor Jacob Frey called the ICE surge an invasion and said he had seen “conduct from ICE that is disgusting and is intolerable.”
“We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another,” Frey said.
TRUMP SUPPORTERS DIVIDED OVER IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a law allowing the president to deploy the military or federalize soldiers in a state’s National Guard to quell rebellion, an exception to laws that prohibit soldiers being used in civil or criminal law enforcement.
It has been used 30 times in U.S. 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.
Trump has already taken the unusual step of federalizing National Guard soldiers to help with immigration law enforcement in Democrat-run cities over the objections of state governors, including in Los Angeles last year, which a judge ruled in December was unconstitutional.
Trump’s aggressive moves in Minnesota have divided his supporters: 59% of Republicans favored a policy prioritizing arrests by immigration officers even if people get hurt, while 39% said officers should focus on reducing harm to people even if it means fewer arrests, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Thursday.
If Trump sends soldiers to Minnesota, he would almost certainly face legal challenges by the state. The Minnesota attorney general’s office has already sued the Trump administration this week, saying the ICE surge was violating Minnesotans’ rights, and on Wednesday asked U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez to issue a temporary order restraining it.
Brian Carter, a lawyer for Minnesota, told the judge that Trump’s agents were engaged in a “pattern of unlawful, violent conduct,” including racial profiling and forced entry into residents’ homes without warrants.
“They are foisting this crisis onto us,” Carter said.
In a social media post on Thursday morning, Trump said incorrectly that the judge had “declined to block” the ICE surge.
In the hearing, Judge Menendez ordered the Trump administration to respond by Monday to Minnesota’s complaints, saying she would rule after that, calling the issues raised by Minnesota’s lawsuit “enormously important.”
“They deal with the very fundamental relationships between the government and the state and municipalities,” she said.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; writing by Jonathan Allen, Editing by Aidan Lewis, Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)
Comments