White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller alleged in a late-night social media post that local and state police in Minneapolis have been ordered to “stand down and surrender” to federal authorities.
“Only federal officers are upholding the law. Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender,” Miller wrote in a Jan. 18 X post.
The bizarre statement came in response to an X post earlier that day from New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, who wrote that “local cops have gone AWOL” amid ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protests.
Miller’s post notably does not acknowledge that under the 10th Amendment in the U.S. constitution, federal authorities do not have the power to command local law enforcement.
Protests sparked after an ICE officer, later identified as Jonathan Ross, fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good earlier this month during an operation in Minneapolis. The Trump administration subsequently claimed that Good carried out “domestic terrorism,” further igniting outrage and protests in the city.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vilified Good during a press conference at the Texas border on Jan. 8, claiming that she “attacked [ICE agents] and those surrounding them” and “attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.” Noem made the remarks despite circulated footage of the incident not backing up her rhetoric about what transpired.
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Following the incident, the Trump administration has been working to block Minnesota authorities from taking part in the FBI’s investigation into the shooting.
HuffPost reached out to the White House and local law enforcement in Minneapolis for comment.
Last week, Miller alleged that Minnesota state officials are staging “an insurgency against the federal government” as they’ve decried increasing federal immigration operations in Minneapolis.
If “you were to permit individual cities and states to ratify their own immigration laws for themselves, you wouldn’t have a republic and you wouldn’t have a country,” he said. “That’s the proposition that [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob] Frey and [Minnesota Attorney General Keith] Ellison and [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz are trying to test.”
Frey, who told ICE agents to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis” earlier this month, blasted the Pentagon Sunday for ordering about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to prepare for possible deployment to Minnesota, calling the move “ridiculous.”
Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Frey told host Jake Tapper that “the act was clearly designed to intimidate the people of Minneapolis.”
