Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act in Minneapolis

President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to send military forces to quell escalating protests over the deployment of federal immigration agents in Minnesota. 

“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 in a post on Truth Social. 

Trump has said in recent weeks that he might use the Insurrection Act — a rarely used law enacted in 1792 that allows the president the authority to deploy the U.S. military domestically and use it against American civilians — to tamp down protests in Minneapolis. The protests surged after the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross last week.

A few hours after Trump’s post on Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pleaded directly with the president to de-escalate the rhetoric and urged Minnesotans to continue protesting, but peacefully, and to not “fan the flames of chaos.”

“Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution,” Walz wrote in a statement shared on X. “This is not who we are.”

Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have slammed the Trump administration’s violent immigration enforcement agenda in the state, and have called for federal agents to be removed from Minnesota.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that she had talked with the president that morning. “We did discuss the Insurrection Act,” Noem said. “He certainly has the constitutional authority to utilize that.” She said she did not know whether Trump would invoke the act in Minnesota.

Tensions in Minneapolis rose further on Wednesday night when a federal immigration agent shot and injured a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis, igniting hours of clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers in the state’s most populous city. The shooting happened one week after Good was shot to death in her vehicle just blocks from her home.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Thursday that federal agents had been trying to arrest the Venezuelan man in a targeted traffic stop when he fled the scene. McLaughlin said the man was in the U.S. illegally and alleged that he tried to attack the agents when they caught up with him, leading to the shooting. 

Local resident Chrissy Tingle, who lives close to where Wednesday night’s clash occurred, was joining community efforts to clean up shattered glass, rubber pellets and tear gas canisters. She told MS NOW that “we are now living in such a hyper-vigilant state. Our nervous systems are shot.”

Out of concerns for safety, Saint Paul Public Schools announced Thursday that it was canceling school for most of next week and would be offering a virtual learning option through Jan. 22. In a similar move, Minneapolis Public Schools similarly canceled classes two days last week but has now resumed, with a remote learning option.

Videos captured over the past week have shown people — some U.S. citizens — often vastly outnumbered by immigration officers, pulled from vehicles, chased down the street and detained.

Also Thursday, the ACLU of Minnesota filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration over the ICE operations, arguing that federal agencies including ICE and Customs and Border Protection violated constitutional rights.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called the Minneapolis protests an “insurrection” in a post on X Wednesday night, adding they are “a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting.”

Nnamdi Egwuonwu contributed to this article