The Pentagon has ordered roughly 1,500 active-duty troops to remain on standby for a possible deployment to Minnesota, where anti-ICE protests are prevalent after an officer-involved shooting that killed a woman.
Tensions between federal and state officials are growing increasingly fraught after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, though he has since backtracked, in response to the protests. Invoking the 19th-century law would certainly inflame hostility between state leaders and federal law enforcement even further.
Active-duty personnel cannot be deployed for domestic law enforcement without using the Insurrection Act.
“The Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the commander in chief if called upon,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey criticized the Trump administration’s preparations for deploying 1,500 troops, calling the move an intimidation tactic and an attempt to lure protesters into a confrontation.
“We’re not going to give them an excuse to do the thing that clearly they’re trying to set up to do right now, which is these 1,500 troops,” Frey told CNN on Sunday. “I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) mobilized the National Guard over the weekend to help maintain public safety during the protests, but those troops have not been deployed yet.
Walz and Frey are likely concerned that Trump will take matters into his own hands with a military deployment under the Insurrection Act.
While he threatened to invoke the law last week, Trump later said he would only do so if he “needed it.” He added that the move is not necessary “right now,” but that could possibly change in the near future as anti-ICE protests in Minnesota continue.
As federal personnel descended on Minneapolis this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good three times while she drove her vehicle toward him. Good’s death sparked local backlash against federal law enforcement trying to detain illegal immigrants and investigate alleged fraud in the state’s social services programs.
Across the board, the Trump administration has defended the actions of Ross as warranted, given the circumstances in which he found himself and decided to forgo an investigation into him. However, that appears to have changed.
The FBI opened a civil rights investigation into the officer’s use of deadly force against Good, according to the Washington Post. This comes after the Department of Justice publicly said it wasn’t planning on using federal resources to investigate the shooting and the events leading up to it. Instead, the department has reportedly pushed for an investigation into Good’s partner.
DOJ PROBING ANTI-ICE PROTEST AT MINNEAPOLIS CHURCH SERVICE
“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Sunday about the prospects of investigating Ross. “And that is not the case here. It was not the case when it happened and is not the case today.”
At least six prosecutors have resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota over the federal government’s handling of Good’s death. The federal investigation is said to focus, in part, on Becca Good’s ties to activist groups in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.