WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has ordered roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be ready for a possible deployment to Minnesota, where federal authorities are conducting a sweeping migrant-enforcement operation, two defense officials said Sunday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said orders have been issued to stage two infantry battalions from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division. The unit is based in Alaska and specializes in operating in Arctic conditions.
One defense official said the troops are prepared to move to Minnesota if President Donald Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, a rarely used 19th-century statute that would allow him to deploy active-duty troops as law enforcement.
The move comes just days after Trump threatened to do precisely that in order to quell protests over his administration’s immigration crackdown.
In an email statement, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell did not deny that orders had been issued and said the military “is always prepared to execute the orders of the commander in chief if asked.”
ABC News was the first to report on this.
On Thursday, Trump wrote on social media that he would invoke the 1807 law “if the corrupt politicians in Minnesota do not obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking ICE Patriots, who are simply trying to do their job.”
He appeared to walk back the threat a day later, telling reporters at the White House that there was no reason to use it “at this time.”
“If I needed it, I would use it,” Trump said. “It is very powerful.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act over his two terms. In 2020 he also threatened to use it to quell protests after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, and in recent months he has threatened to use it for protests against immigration raids.
The law was invoked most recently by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 to quell the riots in Los Angeles after the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat and a frequent target of Trump, has urged the president to refrain from sending more troops.
“I’m issuing a direct appeal to the president: Lower the temperature. Stop this campaign of retaliation. This is not who we are,” Walz said last week on social media.
