Your biggest legal questions about ICE and the Minneapolis shooting, answered

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — Minneapolis has seen tense demonstrations against the Trump administration’s deployment of federal agents to the city for an immigration crackdown, raising questions about what these officers can do on the ground and how President Donald Trump can respond.

As protests escalated following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the Trump administration defended the agent and doubled down on its efforts in the Minneapolis area, sending in more resources.

Trump has also threatened to the extreme step of invoking the Insurrection Act to clamp down on the protests and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has suggested people may be asked to “validate their identity” in some cases.

Here are some of the most common questions, answered.

What is the Insurrection Act?

The law that Trump is threatening to invoke would allow him to deploy active-duty US troops to Minnesota as “necessary to enforce (US) laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

The law says the president can send troops to control situations they consider to be “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

A state governor or legislature can also request troops — as was the case the last time the law was invoked in 1992 — but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has openly rebuked the surge of federal activity in Minneapolis.

There is precedent of a president invoking the act without the support of a governor.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy both invoked the Insurrection Act against the wishes of governors in order to facilitate school integration after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

On Friday, Trump said there’s no reason to use the Insurrection Act “right now,” but that he’d invoke the law if he felt it were necessary.

“I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I’d use it. It’s very powerful,” the president told reporters.

Read CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf’s analysis of the Insurrection Act here.

What authority has the Trump administration given to federal agents?

Immigration agents can use deadly force against someone who poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, according to a DHS policy. Historically, federal law enforcement agencies have spent weeks or even months conducting exhaustive investigations before deciding whether an agent’s use of force was appropriate.

But Trump administration officials have rushed to offer full-throated defenses of immigration agents after high-profile use of force, raising questions about whether mechanisms meant to hold law enforcement accountable for wrongdoing have been abandoned in Trump’s second term, writes CNN’s Josh Campbell.

The administration has argued agents are immune to prosecution by state or local officials. And any federal prosecutions seem unlikely, Campbell writes, due to Trump’s installation of political loyalists atop the Justice Department and FBI.

In August, during the federal takeover of the Washington, DC, police department, Trump effectively gave law enforcement a green light to use force that may far outpace the severity of the circumstances, according to Campbell.

While lamenting images he claimed to have seen showing protesters spitting on officers, Trump said in August, “I said, ‘You tell them, “You spit, and we hit,”’ and they can hit real hard,” Trump said. “And they’re standing there, and people are spitting in their face, and they’re not allowed to do anything.”

“But now,” he added, “they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.”

A similar carte blanche signal is being sent to ICE officers and other federal agencies assisting in Trump’s immigration crackdown, DOJ insiders have told CNN.

Read more of Campbell’s analysis on federal agents’ powers here.

Can federal agents ask to see proof of citizenship?

Noem said Thursday that federal agents may also ask people around someone they’re targeting to “validate their identity.”

“If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there, and having them validate their identity,” Noem said. “That’s what we’ve always done.”

Is this legal? CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig said, “It’s illegal and it’s unconstitutional to require people to show their citizenship papers without some other basis to make a stop.”

“What you cannot do is just go arbitrarily up to people or set up a checkpoint or go door to door and say, ‘Hey, you need to prove to us that you’re a US citizen,’” Honig added. “The immigration officer needs to have some reasonable suspicion. You cannot just arbitrarily approach people and make them prove that they are in fact here legally.”

Cori Alonso-Yoder, an associate professor at University of Maryland law school, told CNN federal agents can ask for proof of citizenship, but people can resist showing their documents under the Fifth Amendment.

“ICE certainly can ask and then the question is, then, how does an individual in that circumstance respond,” Yoder, who is also the director of the law school’s immigration clinic, said. “Because there are protections under the Fifth Amendment, regardless of immigration status, to not incriminate oneself or to again assert one’s right to remain silent when engaging with law enforcement.”

What is the 10th Amendment, which Minnesota has invoked to block federal agents?

On Monday, Minnesota filed a lawsuit seeking to curb the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the state, arguing that it violates the 10th Amendment.

Illinois has also filed a similar lawsuit.

Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, told CNN the 10th Amendment established that states retain sovereign power to make local laws and govern within their borders, and the federal government cannot impose its will over a state, unless that authority has been granted by Congress or the Constitution.

In its lawsuit, Minnesota emphasized strains on local police resources, asserting that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have been forced to divert officers from their usual duties to respond to incidents involving federal immigration enforcement, undermining local efforts to protect the community.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said earlier this week that the state’s lawsuit is aimed squarely at what he described as unlawful federal overreach, not at blocking immigration enforcement itself.

Read why Honig says Minnesota and Illinois’ cases “are close to completely meritless” here.

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CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf, Josh Campbell, Michael Williams, Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Chelsea Bailey, Danya Gainor, and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.