Federal agents stand guard as demonstrators and community members gather near the scene where federal agents shot a man during an immigration raid in Minneapolis on Wednesday.Jim Vondruska/NurPhoto/AP
The Trump administration’s offensive against immigrants in Minneapolis—and those who seek to help them—continued to intensify Wednesday night and into Thursday after a federal agent shot another person during an immigration operation.
President Donald Trump, in a Thursday morning Truth social post, threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act—a centuries-old law that allows the president to deploy the US military domestically.
The move comes after another chaotic night in Minneapolis during which a federal agent shot a man in the leg, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The City of Minneapolis said that the man was taken to the hospital with a non-life threatening injury.
According to DHS, the man was a Venezuelan national who was a target in an immigration operation. The federal agency claimed in a statement on X that officers were assaulted on the scene prior to the shooting and that an agent was also taken to the hospital.
This latest shooting by a federal agent comes just one week after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Rénee Nicole Good in her car.
In a post commenting on initial reports of the shooting, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday evening that there was a “Minnesota insurrection” happening. Blanche, who used to be Trump’s personal attorney, accused Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of “encouraging violence against law enforcement.” Both Frey and Walz have multiple times called for peaceful protests against ICE’s actions in the city.
“Walz and Frey,” Blanche wrote, “I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.”
President Trump threatening to send the military into a US city under the Insurrection Act isn’t a new idea for the administration. Back in 2023 in an interview with the New York Times, Stephen Miller,Trump’s longtime advisor, said that they were already planning to invoke the law to apprehend immigrants.
The ongoing situation in Minneapolis has been intensifying for over a month and has only become more acute after the killing of Good. Videos from the frontlines, including many published by Mother Jones, show federal agents violently pulling a woman from her car, repeatedly deploying chemical agents on protestors, and otherwise continuing their offensive against those DHS claims are in the country without legal status—in their home, at school, and at work.
In a Wednesday night address, Gov. Walz spoke directly to Minnesotans, urging them to continue to record ICE’s actions. “If you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and record. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans. Not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution,” he said, once again telling protestors to respond peacefully. “Trump wants this chaos,” Walz added. “He wants confusion. And yes, he wants more violence on our streets. We cannot give him what he wants. We can’t. We must protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully.”
“This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement, instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by the federal government,” Walz said, telling Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to “end this occupation.”
