MINNEAPOLIS — President Trump said on Thursday that he might use the Insurrection Act, a set of 18th- and 19th-century laws that allow the deployment of US troops inside the country, to crack down on the intensifying protests in Minneapolis.
The threat to invoke the act, which would represent a major escalation in Trump’s campaign against American cities, came amid continued clashes in Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last week.
On Wednesday evening, another federal agent shot and injured a man in the city, touching off hours of clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers.
Trump said in a social media post that he would invoke the Insurrection Act “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.” He has mused about using the law in the past but has never followed through.
Some 3,000 federal agents, including from ICE, have deployed to the Minneapolis area in recent weeks, angering residents and local officials. The Trump administration has defended the action as necessary to crack down on illegal immigration and root out fraud.
The US law generally forbids the use of the military as a domestic police force, as long-standing American principle and tradition has sought to limit military involvement in civilian affairs. But the Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military in extraordinary circumstances.
In his social media post, Trump said using the act would “quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”
The act has been invoked about 30 times in US history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, including at the start of the Civil War and to suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s. It was most recently used in 1992, when riots broke out in Los Angeles after the acquittal of white police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
In response to Trump’s threat, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, pleaded with the president to “turn the temperature down” and “stop this campaign of retribution.”
The governor also called for restraint among Minnesota residents. “We cannot fan the flames of chaos,” he said.
Demonstrators and federal agents clashed in North Minneapolis on Wednesday night, with the agents firing tear gas into the crowds and at one point detaining two teenagers. Protesters stood in front of the agents’ vehicles and occasionally threw snowballs and hurled fireworks toward them. Scenes from the streets were widely circulated by news networks and on social media.
Department of Homeland Security officials identified the man a federal agent shot Wednesday as Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the department, said the shooting came after a traffic stop at around 6:50 p.m. in which agents were trying to arrest Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national in the country illegally.
When an officer caught up to Sosa-Celis, McLaughlin said, he “began to resist and violently assault the officer.” She said two people came out of a nearby building and, along with Sosa-Celis, attacked the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle.
The officer feared for his life and shot Sosa-Celis in the leg, McLaughlin said.
A woman who lives next door to where the shooting took place, Brieella Johnson, said that she and her daughter heard two gunshots, then watched from their porch as more federal agents swarmed the neighborhood, aiming guns at the house, where someone, possibly one of the men who allegedly attacked the officer, had barricaded himself inside. Federal agents threw smoke grenades in an effort to force the person to come out, she said.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that the agent who shot Sosa-Celis was “beat up” and bruised. “He’s getting treatment,” Noem said. “We’re thankful that he made it out alive.” Minneapolis officials said Sosa-Celis had what appeared to be a non-life-threatening injury.
Opposition to the federal presence in the city hardened after the fatal shooting of Good, a 37-year-old mother and poet, as she tried to drive away from a confrontation with federal agents. The Trump administration has described Good as a domestic terrorist, a label that has further inflamed and angered residents.
Demonstrators have called for the arrest and prosecution of the agent, Jonathan Ross. That is an unlikely outcome since the Trump administration views the shooting as justified, and given the rarity of convictions against law enforcement officers. But lawyers representing Good’s family said Wednesday that they were pursuing what they described as a civil investigation of her killing.
Officials for the public school system in St. Paul said they were canceling two days of classes next week and would temporarily allow remote learning for students “who do not feel comfortable coming to school at this time.” Minneapolis schools are also offering temporary remote instruction.
Meanwhile, several Native Americans have allegedly been swept up in the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis.
Tribal leaders and members who live in the greater Minneapolis area say Indigenous family members, friends, and neighbors have been stopped, questioned, harassed, and, in some cases, detained solely on the basis of their skin color or their names. Some immigration experts suggested ICE officers might have racially profiled them and mistook them for being Hispanic.
Four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were detained by ICE officers soon after the Minneapolis operation began, according to tribal president Frank Star Comes Out. Tribal leaders for days unsuccessfully sought information about their status before learning that one man had been released, he said in a statement.
The other three remain in custody at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, on the outskirts of Minneapolis, where ICE has detained people arrested in the enforcement operation, he said.
“Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe are United States citizens,” Star Comes Out said. “We are the first Americans. We are not undocumented immigrants, and we are not subject to unlawful immigration enforcement actions by ICE or Homeland Security.”
Material from The Washington Post was included in this report.
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