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<\/p>\nThe 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 have told Reuters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Confrontations between residents and federal officers have become increasingly tense in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s most-populous city, after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen and mother of three, on January 7 as she was driving away after being ordered to exit her car.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces if officials in the state do not stop protesters from targeting immigration officials after a surge in ICE agents.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Public anger at ICE is intensifying after the shooting of Renee Good this month. (AP: Mike Householder)<\/p>\n
But if the troops are deployed, it is unclear whether the Trump administration would invoke the Insurrection Act.<\/p>\n
Even without invoking the act, a president can deploy active-duty forces for certain domestic purposes such as protecting federal property, which Mr Trump cited as a justification for sending Marines to Los Angeles last year.<\/p>\n
In addition to the active-duty forces, the Pentagon could also attempt to deploy newly created National Guard rapid-response forces for civil disturbances.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment on the order, which was first reported by ABC News.<\/p>\n
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Protests against the federal ICE deployment have escalated in recent weeks. (Reuters: Seth Herald)<\/p>\n
Threat of troops follows immigration crackdown<\/p>\n
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE, who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n
The soldiers subject to deployment specialise in cold-weather operations and are assigned to two US Army infantry battalions under the 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska, the officials said.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump, a Republican, has sent nearly 3,000 federal agents from ICE and Border Patrol to Minneapolis and neighbouring St Paul since early last week, as part of a wave of interventions, mostly to cities run by Democratic politicians.<\/p>\n
He has said troop deployments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Memphis and Portland, Oregon, are necessary to fight crime and protect federal property and personnel from protesters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this month he said he was removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, which have faced legal setbacks and challenges.<\/p>\n
Local leaders have accused the president of federal overreach and of exaggerating isolated episodes of violence to justify sending in troops.<\/p>\n
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, against whom the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation, has mobilised the state’s National Guard to support local law enforcement and emergency management agencies, the state Department of Public Safety posted on X on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump has repeatedly invoked a scandal around the theft of federal funds intended for social-welfare programs in Minnesota as a rationale for sending in immigration agents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The president and administration officials have singled out the state’s community of Somali immigrants.<\/p>\n
The Insurrection Act is a federal law that gives the president the power to deploy the military or federalise National Guard troops inside the US to quell domestic uprisings.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,790,6429,3,2564,191965,95199,21,19,22,20,25,77607,24],"class_list":["post-415585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-immigration","tag-minnesota","tag-news","tag-protests","tag-renee-good","tag-troops","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-army","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}