WASHINGTON, United States (AFP)—US President Donald Trump said Friday there was no immediate need to invoke the Insurrection Act over protests against immigration raids in Minnesota, a day after threatening to use the law.

Trump had threatened the drastic measure that would have allowed him to deploy the military to the northern state for law enforcement purposes in response to protests against broad-reaching immigration raids spearheaded by his administration.

“If I needed it, I would use it. I don’t think there is any reason right now to use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the law that allows the deployment of soldiers on US soil.

Crowds of protesters have clashed with immigration officers across the city of Minneapolis, opposing their efforts to target undocumented migrants with some officers responding with violence.

Federal agents fired their weapons in two separate incidents, wounding a man from Venezuela Wednesday and killing an American woman last week.

A woman was roughly pulled from her car by officers Tuesday, an AFP correspondent saw, amid the escalating deployment of federal officers to the state.

Proponents of immigration enforcement have also begun to face off with those who oppose it in the state, leading to tense encounters.

Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accused federal agents of waging “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota,” in a video posted to X Wednesday night.

The Insurrection Act allows a president to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act to suppress “armed rebellion” or “domestic violence” and use the armed forces “as he considers necessary” to enforce the 19th-century law.