Chaos broke out again in Minneapolis overnight Wednesday, following the shooting of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. Another shooting at the hands of federal agents deployed in Minnesota led to several hours of protests and clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement, who fired tear gas and pepper spray balls into the crowd.
In response, President Donald Trump threatened Thursday morning to invoke the Insurrection Act to control the situation in Minnesota. “If Minnesota’s corrupt politicians do not obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists who attack ICE patriots who are just trying to do their job, I will apply the INSURRECTION ACT, as many presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the farce taking place in that once great State,” on his Truth social network.
This law, from 1807, allows the president to deploy the US Armed Forces in national territory or take control of the National Guard, which is normally under the command of the States, to combat an internal armed uprising. The last time this rule was invoked was in 1992.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, at around 7 p.m. local time on Wednesday, a group of agents attempted to conduct “a selective traffic stop” to detain a Venezuelan who was in the country illegally, but the man attempted to evade arrest. He fled in his vehicle but crashed into another parked car, so he continued his escape on foot. When one of the agents caught up with him, the migrant “began to resist and violently attack” the officer.
“While the subject and the law enforcement officer struggled on the ground, two individuals emerged from a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle,” the department adds. At that time, the Venezuelan man managed to get away and began to hit the agent, so “fearing for his life and safety,” the agent fired his weapon and hit the man in the leg. The individual, who has not been identified, was taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the city of Minneapolis reported.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, indicated this morning in a meeting with journalists at the White House that the agent involved in the incident “was beaten, and is injured.”
After the second shooting, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey repeated his demand that the 3,000 officers deployed in the city, in what the Trump administration calls “the largest immigration operation ever conducted,” leave. “This is an impossible situation that our city is currently being placed in and, at the same time, we are trying to find a way out, to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors and to maintain order,” the councilman said at a press conference on Wednesday night.
The area of the shooting, which took place in the north of the city, soon became another scene of protests on the day that marked a week since the death of Good, a US citizen, mother of three and poet, who was killed by ICE on January 7 during another immigration operation in a southern neighborhood of the most populated city in Minnesota.
Since then, daily protests have been held in the so-called Twin Cities, as the Minneapolis and St. Paul area is known, while immigration agents have continued to carry out raids and arrests, while repressing demonstrations. The agents’ state and local leaders, protesters, neighbors and pro-immigrant organizations.
On Wednesday, in a brief speech, the state governor, Democrat Tim Walz, called on the population to help the authorities “to record exactly what is happening in our communities.” “You have the absolute right to peacefully record ICE agents doing these activities. So carry your phone with you at all times, and if you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and press record. Help us create a database of atrocities against Minnesotans,” he said.
For its part, the Trump Administration accuses state and city officials of “actively encouraging organized resistance against ICE and federal law enforcement agents.” “Their hateful rhetoric and resistance against men and women who are simply trying to do their jobs must end,” the Department of Homeland Security said after Wednesday’s event.
Protests in the area where the second shooting occurred continued late into the night. Officers were seen spraying protesters directly in the face with pepper spray, and at one point, a protester threw fireworks toward ICE.
