Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act over Minneapolis ICE clashes

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Jan 15, 2026

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President Donald Trump Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military troops on the streets of Minneapolis amid escalating clashes between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carrying out his mass deportation push.

The White House threat, which came after ICE agents shot and wounded a suspect overnight, marks the latest effort by Trump to raise the stakes of his crackdown in the city after he warned of “a day of reckoning and retribution” for protesters who have dogged more than 2,000 ICE agents.

“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 (and) quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great state,” Trump said on his social media site.

Trump’s post came came just hours after a federal immigration officer shot and wounded a Minneapolis man from Venezuela who the officer says attacked him with a shovel and broom handle. The latest shooting further raised tensions that have been at a boiling point in the Twin Cities since another ICE agent shot and killed unarmed Minneapolis motorist Renee Nicole Good last week.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the 1792 Insurrection Act over the years to beef up the response to various anti-administration protests, a move that critics say would be illegal.

In a similar issue, the Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump overstepped his authority when he sought to send National Guard troops into states where governors objected to the deployment.

The last time a president invoked the Insurrection Act was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and it has only been used over the objections of a governor in modern times during the civil rights era.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in Minnesota since early December. Officials are vowing not to back down in carrying out Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Demonstrations have become commonplace on the streets of Minneapolis since the ICE agent fatally shot Good, a mother of three, on Jan. 7. Agents have yanked American citizens from their cars and homes and have been confronted by angry bystanders and protesters who track their movements and warn others of their presence with whistles and banging pots and pans.

Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey described the crackdown as not “sustainable” and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minnesota, called it “a campaign of organized brutality.”