Although federal judges have blocked Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Democratic-led cities like Chicago and Portland, there are growing fears that the president's next step could be to invoke the Insurrection Act, even though he lacks the legal basis to do so.

Trump remains defiant despite legal and constitutional objections to his plan to militarize Democratic cities where he claims there are “internal enemies.” Under the guise of combating undocumented immigration and crime, the administration wants to normalize the militarization of cities, with adverse results.

There is increased insecurity, especially for people of color, even citizens, due to the indiscriminate arrests carried out by masked ICE agents who act with violence and impunity.

In fact, federal judge Sara Ellis prohibited ICE agents from using force against protesters and journalists who do not pose a threat. Ellis held that the agents' actions "clearly violate the Constitution."

Even religious figures are not exempt from ICE violence. One of the plaintiffs who asked the court to restrict the use of force is Presbyterian Reverend David Black, at whom ICE agents fired pepper spray bullets, one of which struck him in the head. The shepherd fell to his knees. “We could hear them laughing,” Black said.

Trump's policies are also fertile ground for the crime he claims to combat because law enforcement agencies have been reassigned to immigration enforcement, neglecting the fight against crimes such as child exploitation, tax fraud, and drug trafficking, among many others.

That's not even counting the severe cuts to law enforcement agencies endorsed by this administration.

For example, the fiscal year 2026 budget removes $1 billion from 40 Department of Justice grant programs that seek to reduce violent crimes, hate crimes, and crimes against women; it cuts $468 million from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), which affects the fight against firearms trafficking and the reduction of gun violence. It also cuts $646 million from FEMA for violence and terrorism prevention; $545 million from the FBI and eliminates 2,000 employees; and $212 million from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

In other words, the Trump administration criticizes Democratic cities for their crime rates but defunds them to combat it. Then it claims that the National Guard should be sent in to take control and dispatch ICE agents who end up generating violence and chaos.

It's like intentionally starting a fire and then extinguishing it and playing the hero. It's creating a crisis to justify harsh measures that violate the rights and protections of all of us.

Because at the moment the legal fight is over activating the National Guard in cities and states that haven't requested it because they don't consider it necessary. Even in protests generated by the presence of ICE, it has been the agents themselves who have generated situations of violence by firing pepper spray and tear gas indiscriminately.

Then Trump calls the protesters "insurrectionists" and there are fears that he will invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, signed into law by then-President Thomas Jefferson. This law allows the president to deploy the military domestically to combat an insurrection that threatens the population.

This law was invoked on 30 occasions, especially in the 1960s amid the bloody struggle for civil rights to protect activists. In 1992, President George HW Bush invoked it amid the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of police officers accused of brutally beating Rodney King.

“If I had to invoke it, I would. If people were being killed and the courts were stopping us, or the governors or mayors were stopping us, of course I would,” Trump said.

But former federal prosecutor Shanlon Wu told Newsweek magazine that it's not just about invoking it, it's about justifying its use. Trump “enjoys the theoretical legal authority to invoke it, but he seems to have absolutely no factual basis to support its use.”

There is no insurrection underway, only the one invented by the president, who, in fact, instigated the most recent on record on January 6, 2021, when his followers violently attempted to prevent the certification of the presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.