(Reuters): US 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 US 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 who the government said was fleeing after agents tried to stop his vehicle in Minneapolis. The man was wounded in the leg.”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 people of Somali origin there “garbage” who should be “thrown out” of the country.
He has already sent nearly 3,000 federal officers to 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 day and night by loud, often angry protests by residents, some blowing whistles or banging tambourines. On Wednesday night, crowds of residents gathered near the area where the Venezuelan man was shot. Some shouted in protest, and federal officers ignited flash-bang grenades and released clouds of tear gas.
Later, after most of the residents had been dispersed, a small group vandalized a car they believed belonged to the federal officers, one person daubing it with red graffiti saying: “Hang Kristi Noem,” in reference to the Homeland Security secretary who oversees ICE.
Since the surge began, agents have arrested both immigrants and protesters, at times smashing windows and pulling people from their cars. They have been shouted at for stopping Black and Latino US citizens to demand identification.
Treated ‘like an animal’
The Trump administration and Minnesota leaders have each blamed the other for stoking anger and violence. In one incident that captured public attention, US citizen Aliya Rahman was grabbed and dragged from her car by masked immigration officers on Tuesday near the site where Good was killed. She said in a statement to Reuters that the agents “dragged me from my car and bound me like an animal, even after I told them that I was disabled.”Rahman said she asked for a doctor repeatedly once taken into ICE custody but was instead taken to a detention center. She lost consciousness in a cell and was then taken to a hospital, she said.
In response to a request for comment, a US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said an “agitator” ignored an officer’s commands to move her vehicle away from the scene of an enforcement action and was arrested for obstruction.
Venezuelan man shot
DHS, which is overseeing Trump’s immigration crackdown, identified the man its officer shot as Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. He had been allowed into the US by the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, in 2022 through the government’s humanitarian parole program. The Trump administration has since revoked the parole granted to Venezuelans and others admitted under Biden.
According to a DHS statement, federal officers tried to stop Sosa-Celis in his vehicle. He fled the scene in his vehicle, crashed into a parked car, then ran away on foot. One officer caught him and while the two were “in a struggle on the ground,” two other Venezuelan men came out of a nearby apartment and “attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” the statement said.
Sosa-Celis got loose and began hitting the officer with “a shovel or a broomstick,” so the officer “fired defensive shots to defend his life,” the DHS statement said. Reuters was not able to verify the account given by DHS. The men fled into the apartment and all three were arrested after officers went in, DHS said. Sosa-Celis and the officer were recovering in hospital from injuries, according to the department and city officials.
Trump supporters divided
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 Democratic-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 favoured a policy prioritizing arrests by immigration officers even if people get hurt, while 39% said officers should focus on not harming people even if it means fewer arrests, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Thursday.
