Trump threatens to invoke pre-Civil War Insurrection Act in Minneapolis after ICE shoots protester

The president previously threatened to use the pre-Civil War law against protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings.

President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send military troops to Minneapolis after a protester was shot in the leg amid an uptick of violent acts against the community by immigration enforcement officers.

“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 on Thursday morning.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, a male protester from Venezuela was shot in the leg on Wednesday night during an encounter with federal agents. The agency claimed agents were attacked by the protester; however, the account of DHS could not be verified.

Things have clearly escalated in Minneapolis after the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother and poet, who was shot in the head by an ICE agent while in her vehicle. Within hours, the Trump administration defended the ICE agent and accused Good of “weaponizing” her car and trying to run over officers.

However, elected officials and community members have disputed the account and questioned the administration’s credibility, given that Trump officials have refused to allow a joint investigation with state officials, as is standard practice. Top legal officials within the Department of Justice have also resigned after the Civil Rights Division declined to investigate the shooting, as did six federal prosecutors in Minnesota after the DOJ pushed to investigate Good’s widow.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rebuked the Trump administration following Wednesday night’s shooting and other violent acts on the ground amid a surge of up to 3,000 federal officers deployed.

“News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption, and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities,” he said in a video address to Minnesotans. “This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.”

Video evidence and accounts on the ground show that federal law enforcement officers used chemical agents against protesters and detained residents without cause, including U.S. citizens.

“At grocery stores, at bus stops, even at our schools, they’re breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process,” said Gov. Walz, who urged President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “end this occupation.”

Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 is a significant escalation. The rarely used Constitutional law would allow the president to federalize the military against U.S. citizens for law enforcement purposes.

Trump has previously threatened to invoke the pre-Civil War law; in 2020, during the Black Lives Matter uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, and last year, during protests in Los Angeles amid outrage against the Trump administration’s ICE operations in the city.

Ed Anderson, a U.S. veteran and lead organizer at Common Defense, previously warned theGrio that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in U.S. cities was a precursor for invoking the Insurrection Act.

“I truly think that Trump and his allies are looking to create a false flag that would allow him to put the Insurrection Act in place and do and become the tyrant that he wants to be,” he told theGrio.