US President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke an emergency law that allows the domestic deployment of the military, after federal agents killed one person and injured another in Minnesota, sparking mass protests.
Protesters have denounced the aggressive tactics of Trump’s broad-reaching immigration raids in rallies in the Midwestern city, which is a Democratic stronghold. Federal agents fired their weapons in two separate incidents, wounding a man from Venezuela on Wednesday and killing an American woman last week.
This Insurrection Act which trump threatens to use, allows a president sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act to suppress armed rebellion or domestic violence and use the armed forces as he considers necessary to enforce the 19th-century law.
However, the Insurrection Act was last invoked in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush at the request of the Republican governor of California, who was facing unprecedented riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers who had beaten Rodney King, a Black motorist, the previous year.
