President Donald Trump threatened to deploy the U.S. military in Minnesota following attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the state.
“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, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday morning.
The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military to states in certain cases of unrest or to enforce federal law.
Republican lawmakers had previously called on Trump to invoke the law and arrest Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat.
Protests over a second ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis erupted on Wednesday evening, with protesters throwing rocks and ice and shooting fireworks at law enforcement, who in turn deployed tear gas, Reuters reported.
Protests first broke out last week after the shooting of Renee Good, 37, by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
Following the shooting of Good, Walz threatened to deploy the Minnesota National Guard to protect Minnesotans, including from “rogue” ICE agents. In a Wednesday video address, he appeared to praise resistance to federal immigration operations in the state.
“All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities not just to resist, but to help people who are in danger,” Walz said. “Thousands upon thousands of our fellow Minnesotans are going to be relying on mutual aid in the days and weeks to come and they need our support.”
Trump floated the Insurrection Act Wednesday shortly after the second ICE-involved shooting in the city in a week.
According to the Department of Homeland Security account of the shooting, the federal officer was making a traffic stop when the subject, a Venezuelan man who was an illegal immigrant, fled the stop in his vehicle. When he crashed, he fled the scene on foot and then violently resisted arrest.
The agent making the arrest was then attacked by two other individuals who emerged from a nearby residence, and the Venezuelan subject assailed the agent with a snow shovel or broom handle, the agency said. The agent fired his gun in self-defense, striking the Venezuelan man in the leg.
The subject and two alleged assailants fled and barricaded themselves inside a residence, where they were ultimately arrested.
