Jacob Frey says Minneapolis won't be ‘intimidated’

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Sunday said his city will not be "intimidated" by President Donald Trump as troops gear up to potentially head to the Midwestern city.

The Pentagon has ordered 1,500 active-duty soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, according to reports. The move comes after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell the ongoing social unrest in the aftermath of the ICE shooting of Renee Good.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Frey said the Pentagon’s order is “clearly” meant to intimidate the people of Minneapolis.

"We will not counter Donald Trump's chaos with our own brand of chaos here,” the Democrat said. “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 ABC’s “This Week” that there are already five times as many ICE agents in Minneapolis as there are police officers, but Trump is looking for an “excuse” to send in more federal personnel.

“I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government,” Frey told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Tensions between the White House and Frey and his fellow Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have been fraught ever since Good’s death on Jan. 7. In the aftermath, the administration has traded barbs with the Minnesota Democrats, now culminating in a reported Justice Department investigation into the two leaders.

As the politicians have continued their critiques of each other, Minnesota residents have continued to pile into the streets despite the frigid temperatures to protest the presence of immigration officials.

Walz has mobilized the state’s National Guard, though no troops have been deployed as of yet.

But Frey on Sunday expressed concerns about a clash between state and federal law enforcement.

“We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another,” he said.

The "very clear antidote" to the ongoing unrest, Frey added, is for ICE to leave Minneapolis.

"Let us live in peace,” he said.