MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota on Thursday, raising the prospect of sending U.S. troops into Minneapolis to quell ongoing protests against a recent federal immigration enforcement surge.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, put the onus on Minnesota politicians to stop protesters from “attacking” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Trump wrote that if Minnesota couldn’t calm the protesters, whom he referred to as “insurrectionists,” he would “institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”
The Insurrection Act enables a president to deploy the military on U.S. soil in extraordinary circumstances: to quell an insurrection, civil disorder or armed rebellion. By invoking the Insurrection Act, a president empowers the military to make arrests and perform searches domestically, functions that the military is generally otherwise prohibited from performing in the United States.
Federal and local leaders traded blame late Wednesday as protesters clashed with authorities after officials said a federal immigration enforcement officer shot a man in the leg following a struggle outside a residence.
On Wednesday night, protesters gathered in Minneapolis to denounce immigration agents’ actions in the city. Footage from the streets showed protesters shouting, blowing whistles, filming ICE officers with their cellphones and calling for them to leave the city amid bursts of tear gas and stun grenades.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said a crowd near the scene of Wednesday’s shooting was “engaging in unlawful acts,” including throwing fireworks at officers, as he urged them to disperse.
“The situation we are seeing in our city is not sustainable,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said on X. “… We cannot respond to Donald Trump’s chaos with our own chaos.”
At an earlier news conference, the mayor described an “impossible situation” in which Minneapolis’s 600 police officers are at times finding themselves at odds with some of the approximately 3,000 ICE agents who have been deployed to the city.
“We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another,” Frey added. He said that he hoped to force ICE out of the state through a lawsuit he and other Minnesota officials filed Monday.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche referred to the protests in Minneapolis on Wednesday as an “insurrection” and blamed the unrest on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Frey, who he said were “encouraging violence against law enforcement” in a situation that has escalated since the fatal shooting of Renée Good last week by an ICE officer.
The person who was shot in the leg Wednesday was from Venezuela and was in the country illegally after coming to the U.S. in 2022, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
The suspect attempted to evade arrest by driving a vehicle away from federal law enforcement officers, crashing it into a parked car and then running away, the agency said.
As an officer caught up with the suspect, two other people came out of a nearby property and began attacking the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle, according to DHS. The person who was fleeing then “began striking the officer with a shovel or a broom stick,” the agency said.
DHS said the officer fired a “defensive shot,” after being “ambushed by three individuals,” hitting the suspect in the leg. It said the officer and the person who was shot were being treated at a hospital.
O’Hara said early information shows there was a “struggle” with a federal agent outside a residence. Frey said an ICE agent shot the man, and city officials demanded that ICE “leave the city and state immediately.”
The Washington Post could not immediately confirm details of the incident or the identity of the person who was shot.
Walz urged those who felt angry to remain peaceful.
“I know you’re angry. I’m angry,” Walz said on X. “What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets. But Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace.”
Tension between protesters and ICE agents has intensified since Good’s shooting last week on a residential street where neighbors were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, stirring national outrage across the political spectrum.
Good’s family has hired attorneys to investigate her killing by an ICE officer, including one of the attorneys who represented the family of George Floyd, the Black man whose killing by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 also ignited national protests.
The federal government has sent thousands of additional officers to the city in the days since Good was shot in her car, leading to complaints from residents that the operation to detain undocumented immigrants instead resembles an armed occupation.
Justine McDaniel, Praveena Somasundaram and Kelly Kasulis Cho contributed to this report.
The post Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act in Minnesota to quell ICE protests appeared first on Washington Post.
