The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty US soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota amid widespread anti-ICE protests, the Washington Post reported. The army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders should violence escalate, the outlet said, citing unnamed defense officials. However, it is unclear whether any of them will be sent.
With tensions high in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump recently threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces. The act is a federal law that gives the president the power to deploy the military or federalize National Guard troops inside the US to be able to quell domestic uprisings.
“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. Thank you for you attention to this matter!” Trump recently wrote on Truth Social.
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The US President said in another Truth Social post, “In Minnesota, the Troublemakers, Agitators, and Insurrectionists are, in many cases, highly paid professionals. The Governor and Mayor don’t know what to do, they have totally lost control, and our currently being rendered, USELESS! If, and when, I am forced to act, it will be solved, QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY!”
Minneapolis protests
Minneapolis has been seeing various anti-ICE protests in the aftermath of Renee Nicole Good’s death. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was gunned down by federal agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, a shooting that the Trump administration claimed was carried out in self-defense as she allegedly struck him with her vehicle.
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In one of the latest rallies, demonstrators gathered downtown near City Hall, waving signs and yelling chants calling for ICE agents to leave Minneapolis, according to Reuters. Hundreds of protesters chased off a small group of far-right activists who had decided to march in a neighborhood where many immigrants live on Saturday, the outlet reported. A few scuffles broke out too.