WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to use the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy military forces, in Minnesota amid escalating tension over a deployment of federal agents in the state’s most populous city, which has become the focus of daily clashes.
“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Trump’s threat on social media came on the heels of the shooting by a U.S. immigration officer of a Venezuelan man fleeing a traffic stop in Minneapolis on Wednesday, one week after the fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing Trump’s immigration crackdown, said that during Wednesday’s incident two people attacked the federal officer with a broomstick and snow shovel as he wrestled with the Venezuelan, who the DHS said was in the U.S. illegally.
The Insurrection Act is a law authorizing the president to deploy military forces on U.S. soil.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Scott Malone)
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