US president Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota in response to protests in Minneapolis against federal immigration enforcement operations, as Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, overnight urged demonstrators in Minneapolis to be peaceful amid escalating tensions.
In a post on Truth Social on Thursday morning, Trump said he would institute the Insurrection Act and “quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place” 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 Ice”.
Later on Thursday morning, Mr Walz put out a statement: “I am making a direct appeal to the president: let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are. And an appeal to Minnesotans: I know this is scary. We can – we must – speak out loudly, urgently but also peacefully. We cannot fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants.”
Mr Trump’s warning on Thursday that he might invoke the Insurrection Act came as, overnight, Mr Walz urged people in Minneapolis to protest peacefully after it was reported on Wednesday evening that a federal officer had shot a man in the leg during an immigration enforcement operation on the north side of the city.
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The incident sparked protests in Minneapolis on Wednesday night, as the city remains on edge just one week after a federal immigration officer there shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.
“State investigators have been on the scene in North Minneapolis,” Mr Walz wrote on X overnight. “I know you’re angry. I’m angry. What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets. But Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace. Don’t give him what he wants.”
Several hundred protesters gathered at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday night. At a news conference later, the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said protesters had been “engaging in unlawful behaviour” and urged people to leave the area.
The US department of homeland security (DHS) said the shooting occurred on Wednesday as “federal law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop in Minneapolis of an illegal alien from Venezuela”.
The DHS alleged the man resisted and attacked an officer, and said that two other individuals emerged from a “nearby apartment and also attacked” the officer, who, the department said, “fired a defensive shot to defend his life”. The federal government’s account could not immediately be verified.
The city of Minneapolis has said that the man who was shot was taken to a local hospital with “apparent non-life-threatening injuries”.
On Wednesday evening, Mr Walz delivered remarks on the ongoing federal presence in Minnesota, in which he said that “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”.
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Mr Walz said that between 2,000 and 3,000 armed federal agents had been deployed across the state and claimed that the Ice agents, whom he described as “armed”, “masked” and “undertrained”, were “going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbours of colour live”.
“They’re pulling over people indiscriminately, including US citizens, and demanding to see their papers,” Mr Walz said.
“Just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process,” he added.
“Let’s be very, very clear,” Mr Walz said. “This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organised brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
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During his remarks, Mr Walz called on Mr Trump and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to “end this occupation”.
“You’ve done enough,” he said.
On Thursday, Ms Noem told reporters that she had “no plans to pull out of Minnesota” and described the conditions on the ground in Minnesota “as violent, and a violation of the law in many places”.
Ms Noem also said she discussed the Insurrection Act with Trump on Thursday morning, and that Trump “certainly has the constitutional authority to utilise that”.
“If anything doesn’t change with governor Walz, I don’t anticipate the streets getting any safer or more peaceful,” Ms Noem added.
Multiple federal prosecutors in Minnesota and Washington DC have resigned over the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Ms Good.
Six attorneys from the US attorney’s office in Minnesota quit on Tuesday, reportedly over the justice department’s reluctance to investigate the Ice agent who fatally shot Ms Good. A justice department spokesperson confirmed the resignations but denied they were related to the Minneapolis shooting. – Guardian
