President Donald Trump on Jan. 15 warned [6] that he may invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in Minnesota to quell protests [7] over the massive deployment of Immigration & Customs Enforcement [8] (ICE) agents to the Twin Cities.
The protests escalated following the Jan. 7 fatal shooting [14] of Minneapolis resident Renee Good, 37, by an ICE agent during "Operation Metro Surge," a large-scale immigration enforcement operation that has seen thousands of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel mobilized to the Twin Cities. Good was serving as a legal observer monitoring the enforcement operation when she was killed. DHS characterized [15] her as a "domestic terrorist" following the shooting—a designation the NAACP Legal Defense Fund called [16] "a shameful and cowardly effort to deflect its own responsibility for this indefensible killing," noting that available video footage did not appear to show Good posing any threat that could justify use of deadly force. Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed [17] a federal lawsuit Jan. 12 challenging the operation as unconstitutional.
On Jan. 15, Trump posted via social media:
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.
The Insurrection Act [9]—originally enacted in 1792—allows the president to "call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States" in order to suppress insurrection or rebellion. The Insurrection Act has not been significantly updated in over 150 years, and the last time a US president invoked [10] the Act was in 1992, when President George HW Bush received a request from then-California Gov. Pete Wilson to help address riots in Los Angeles.
Trump has broached [11] invoking the Act before, and has since been met with reversals in the courts over his efforts to mobilize National Guard troops under the executive's constitutional "authority to suppress rebellion [12]." Just last October, he attempted [18] to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Ore., but a federal district judge deemed [19] the attempt unlawful, finding that the requisite “rebellion” did not exist.
The US Supreme Court in December rejected [20] Trump’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in Illinois, finding: "[T]he Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois. The President has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act." The one-sentence Posse Comitatus Act [21] prohibits military personnel from participating in civilian law enforcement unless doing so is expressly authorized by a statute (e.g., the Insurrection Act) or the Constitution.
In response to questions outside the White House Jan. 15, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said [22] that there were "no plans to pull out of Minnesota," and added that what's happening on the ground in the Twin Cities is "violent" and "a violation of the law in many places." She also claimed that President Trump "certainly has the constitutional authority to utilize" the Insurrection Act.
From JURIST [23], Jan. 15. Used with permission. Internal links added.
Note: Trump's Inauguration Day executive order declaring a state of emergency on the southern border also set a deadline [24] of April 20, 2025 for a joint Pentagon-Homeland Security recommendation on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act. The reoprt, handed in two days early, failed to recommend invocation of the Act. (CNN [25])
Days later, on April 28, Trump issued Executive Order 14287 [26], "Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens," which stated that city and state sanctuary policies constitute "a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States."
