Pentagon readies 1,500 troops for potential Minnesota deployment, officials say

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, the site of large protests against the government’s deportation drive, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.

The US army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in the midwestern state escalates, the officials said, though it is not clear whether any of them will be sent.

Donald Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces if Democratic officials in the state do not stop protesters from impeding immigration officials after a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Increasingly tense confrontations between residents and federal officers have erupted in Minneapolis since Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot behind the wheel of her car by ICE officer Jonathan Ross on 7 January.

On Saturday, Jake Lang, an anti-Muslim, antisemitic, Christian nationalist who was pardoned by Trump for assaulting police officers during the Capitol riot in 2021, tried, and failed, to rally support for the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Just five people joined Lang’s anti-Muslim rally, two holding a banner that read “Americans Against Islamisation”, at which he had promised “to burn a Quran”. They were met by hundreds of counterprotesters, who covered Lang in aerosol string, doused him in water in freezing cold temperatures and chased him off to jeers. However, images of Lang and one of his five supporters bleeding after scuffles with demonstrators were eagerly shared online as evidence of violent chaos in Minneapolis.

The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said on Sunday that any military deployment would be “ridiculous” and only exacerbate tensions in Minnesota’s largest city, where the Trump administration has already sent 3,000 immigration and border patrol officers who have been confronted by largely peaceful protests.

“That would be a shocking step,” Frey told NBC News. “We don’t need more federal agents to keep people safe. We are safe.”

Confrontations between federal officers and protesters in the city intensified after the killing of Good, which the Trump administration has called justified.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, told CBS News on Sunday that Frey should set up “a peaceful protest zone” for demonstrators. The aim of the protesters, however, is not to simply voice their dissent but to make life difficult for the immigration enforcement officers, by jeering them and blowing whistles to alert their immigrant neighbors to their presence.

Trump has repeatedly invoked an unrelated scandal around the theft of federal funds intended for social welfare programs in Minnesota as a rationale for sending in immigration agents. The president and administration officials have singled out the state’s community of Somali immigrants.

ICE agents are targeting other immigrant communities in the Twin Cities as well. On Sunday, agents entered a St Paul house and removed an elderly man who was wearing only underwear and a blanket as onlookers shouted at them to leave. The man was a member of the Hmong community, which came to the region from Laos starting in the 1970s after siding with the US in the Vietnam war. About one-third of the US Hmong population are immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center.

If active-duty troops are deployed, it is unclear whether the Trump administration would formally invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the power to deploy the military or federalize state national guard troops to quell domestic uprisings. Even without invoking the act, a president can deploy active-duty forces for certain domestic purposes such as protecting federal property, which Trump cited as a justification for sending marines to Los Angeles last year.

In addition to the active-duty forces, the Pentagon could also attempt to deploy newly created national guard rapid-response forces for civil disturbances. “The Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the commander-in-chief if called upon,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, using the Trump administration’s preferred name for the department of defense.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order, which was first reported by ABC News.

As Minnesotans joke the federal invasion of their state in winter echoing Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia and share images of ICE officers slipping on ice, the soldiers subject to deployment specialize in cold-weather operations and are based in Alaska, the officials said.

Trump sent the surge of federal agents to Minneapolis and neighboring St Paul early this month, as part of a wave of interventions across the US, mainly to cities run by Democratic politicians, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, all in states that voted against him in the previous three presidential elections.

Trump called the deployments necessary to protect federal property and personnel from protesters. But this month he said he was removing the national guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, where the deployments have faced legal setbacks and challenges.

Local leaders have accused the president of federal overreach and of exaggerating isolated episodes of violence to justify sending in troops. Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, who, along with the Minneapolis mayor, is reportedly the target of a federal criminal investigation for allegedly impeding immigration raids, has mobilized the state’s national guard to support local law enforcement and the rights of peaceful demonstrators, the state’s department of public safety announced on Saturday.