'Arbitrary, Outlandish, and Unjustified': Raskin Warns Trump Against Invoking Insurrection Act

After being "flooded with messages," the U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin issued a lengthy Friday statement about mounting rumors that Republican President Donald Trump "may invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy the National Guard to conduct arrests at the border or elsewhere on U.S. soil" as soon as this weekend.

Although "we have no specific information indicating that this will happen," noted Raskin (D-Md.)—the House Judiciary Committee's ranking member and a constitutional scholar—the public "anxiety arises from the fact that April 20 is the due date for a report from Trump's Cabinet on the state of the southern border called for in a presidential executive order which specifically mentions the Insurrection Act."

As Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth have prepared to hand over their report, warnings and explainer articles have circulated this week. Bill Blum wrote about it at Truthdig, PolitiFact detailed the difference between invoking the Insurrection Act and martial law, and both the ACLU and the Interfaith Alliance shared blog posts. That all followed a Waging Nonviolence piece from earlier this month laying out what to do if Trump takes the feared action.

Raskin explained that "the Insurrection Act was designed for only the most extraordinary and dire circumstances, specifically when unlawful rebellion 'make[s] it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.'"

Invoking the law in the current reality, he continued, "would be an arbitrary, outlandish, and unjustified exercise of power. It cannot be the case that this is 'the most secure border in history' and simultaneously that we need to invoke the Insurrection Act to address the crisis there."

According to the congressman: "There is no factual predicate for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border or anywhere else in the United States. The courts are open and perfectly functional (much to Trump's dismay), state and local police continue to enforce the laws, and the Trump administration routinely celebrates the safety and calm at the border."

"Trump might want to call out the troops because they look 'tough,'" he acknowledged. "That seems to have been his rationale for using military planes as props to fly immigrants to Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador's brutal mega-prison. This is plainly no justification for triggering the act, and Trump would also essentially be admitting extreme policy failure. This can be the most secure border in history, or it can be an insurrection requiring the extraordinary use of the American military in our own society. But it certainly cannot be both."

Since returning to power, having campaigned on the promise of mass deportations, Trump has sparked fears about crackdowns on civil society, sent immigration agents after foreign students critical of U.S. support for Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, and shipped hundreds of migrant men to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—including Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was supposed to be protected by a court order blocking deportation to his homeland.

Raskin said on social media Thursday that he was "grateful to my friend" and fellow Maryland Democrat, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, "for traveling to El Salvador to try to check on Abrego Garcia's condition."

"We will not let up the pressure on the self-proclaimed dictator of El Salvador or the aspiring dictator here," he pledged. "We will continue the fight to bring Abrego Garcia home."

The congressman also highlighted that Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S.-born American citizen, was detained at a Florida jail this week at the request of immigration authorities. Raskin said: "How is it possible U.S. citizens are being held as illegal aliens in America even after they produce their birth certificate? This is intolerable."

In his Friday statement, Raskin concluded with a message for Trump: "I urge the president to make the report public and to commit himself to protecting the civil rights and civil liberties of the people of the United States by keeping the military out of civilian law enforcement matters. We must stop playing cheap political games with immigration, and we must restore the rule of law in America."