Trump Prepares to Deploy Troops to Minnesota to Snuff Out ICE Protests

The Trump administration is ordering active-duty military police soldiers to be ready to deploy to Minneapolis.

MS NOW, citing three unnamed sources, reports that an Army military police brigade unit stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was issued “prepare to deploy” orders Tuesday. At least a few hundred soldiers are now getting ready to potentially go to the city, which has been rocked by violence from federal agents following the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer.

“We have nothing to announce at this time, and any tip about this is pre-decisional,” a Department of Defense official told MS NOW.

This latest order comes after news of another deployment from Friday. Two battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, stationed in Alaska and specially trained to operate in winter weather, were also issued orders to be ready to deploy. There are at least 500 soldiers in a battalion.

Last summer, the Trump administration deployed 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, where they mostly guarded federal buildings, including an immigration detention center. That deployment was found to be illegal in federal court. If soldiers are deployed to Minneapolis, they would have to refrain from enforcing the law against civilians, otherwise they would be violating the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, as Trump was found to have done in Los Angeles.

President Trump has been simultaneously threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and claiming that he doesn’t need to do so in order to use federal troops to put down what he sees as a “rebellion.” Either way, not only is he threatening the Constitution and the stability of the U.S., but he would also be following the example of a dictator, which, oddly enough, he just said he wants to be.