President Donald Trump’s multiple deployments of military forces to US cities have little precedent in American history. Now, Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops to Minnesota to quell protests against federal immigration officials.
The 1807 act is one of several legal avenues available to a president to respond to domestic disturbances. Over the past year, Trump has relied on different legal foundations to send military forces to Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Memphis and New Orleans. He has faced a series of legal setbacks, including at the Supreme Court, that have prompted troop withdrawals in most of the cities. Mobilizing forces under the Insurrection Act would significantly escalate Trump’s campaign to assert military power at home.
What is the Insurrection Act?
The 1807 Act is a group of statutes that give the president authority to deploy the military for domestic use during an insurrection or civil disturbance, without congressional approval.
The act specifies circumstances when it can be used — at the request of a state, to enforce federal law, or to protect the civil rights of individuals. Before troops can be deployed, the president must first issue a public proclamation and order “insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time,” according to a Congressional Research Service Report.
There are limits to what troops mobilized under the Insurrection Act can legally do. They are not allowed to violate constitutional rights, including searching a person’s home without a warrant, according to the Brennan Center.
How would a deployment under the Insurrection Act differ from those ordered by Trump so far?
The Insurrection Act has been interpreted as an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, a 1878 federal statute that prohibits military forces from carrying out domestic law enforcement. Trump’s prior deployments have been subject to that law. In California, a federal judge ruled in September that the Posse Comitatus Act was violated by the administration’s deployment of the National Guard, the primary combat reserve of the Army and Air Force, and several hundred US Marines in Los Angeles in June to counter immigration enforcement protests.
Why is Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act?
Trump has cited ongoing protests in Minneapolis as the impetus for turning to the Insurrection Act.
Protesters and federal agents have been engaged in standoffs in the city, where thousands of federal agents have surged as part of the president’s immigration crackdown. Tensions have heightened following recent instances of violence, including cases in which a US citizen was shot and killed by an immigration agent and a man was shot in the leg by a federal officer.
When has the Insurrection Act been invoked in recent decades?
The Insurrection Act was most recently invoked in 1992. President George H.W. Bush activated the California National Guard at the request of Governor Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley when rioting broke out in the city following a jury’s acquittal of police officers charged with severely beating a Black man, Rodney King, after a high-speed car chase.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy sent troops to Mississippi to counter resistance to court-ordered desegregation. President Lyndon Johnson later used troops to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. He also invoked the act to send National Guard soldiers under federal control to Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore to help quell race riots.
How has the Trump administration justified deploying troops domestically so far?
In deploying the National Guard, the Trump administration has cited Title 10 of the US Code, which authorizes the president to take federal control of state National Guard troops in certain situations. Under that statute, the president can federalize state troops in cases of invasion, rebellion, or when local authorities cannot enforce federal law.
Trump administration officials have said that the president has deployed Marines to protect federal buildings from protesters and have argued that under the US Constitution, he has the power to safeguard federal property and personnel.
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