soldier

MINNEAPOLIS — The mayor of Minneapolis said Sunday that sending active-duty soldiers into Minnesota to help with an immigration crackdown is a ridiculous and unconstitutional idea as he urged protesters to remain peaceful so the president won’t see a need to send in the U.S. military.

Daily protests have been ongoing throughout January since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.

In a diverse neighborhood where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been frequently seen, U.S. postal workers marched through on Sunday, chanting: “Protect our routes. Get ICE out.”

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers based in Alaska who specialize in operating in arctic conditions to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota, two Defense officials said Sunday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said two infantry battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division have been given prepare-to-deploy orders.

One Pentagon official said the troops are standing by to deploy to Minnesota should President Trump invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened.

The rarely used 19th century law would allow him to send military troops into Minnesota, where protesters have been confronting federal immigration agents for weeks. He has since backed off the threat, at least for now.

“It’s ridiculous, but we will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It is not fair, it’s not just, and it’s completely unconstitutional.”

Thousands of Minneapolis citizens are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, Frey said.

“We are not going to take the bait. We will not counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos here,” Frey said.

Gov. Tim Walz has mobilized the Minnesota National Guard, although no units have been deployed to the streets.

Peter Noble joined dozens of other U.S. Postal Service workers Sunday on their only day off from their mail routes to march against the immigration crackdown. They passed by the place where an immigration officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, during a Jan. 7 confrontation.

“I’ve seen them driving recklessly around the streets while I am on my route, putting lives in danger,” Noble said.

Letter carrier Susan Becker said she came out to march on the coldest day since the crackdown started because it’s important to keep telling the federal government she thinks what it is doing is wrong. She said people on her route have reported ICE breaking into apartment buildings and tackling people in the parking lots of shopping centers.

“These people are by and large citizens and immigrants. But they’re citizens, and they deserve to be here; they’ve earned their place and they are good people,” Becker said.

A Republican U.S. House member from Minnesota called for Walz to tone down his comments about fighting the federal government and help the federal law enforcement efforts.

Many of the ICE officers in Minnesota are neighbors just doing the jobs they were sent to do, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told WCCO-AM in Minneapolis.

“These are not mean-spirited people. But right now, they feel like they’re under attack. They don’t know where the next attack is going to come from and who it is. So people need to keep in mind this starts at the top,” Emmer said.

Across social media, videos have been posted of federal officers spraying protesters with pepper spray, knocking down doors and forcibly taking people into custody. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that immigration officers can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when they’re observing the officers during the Minnesota crackdown.

Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Joseph McCabe, who runs his own construction firm and co-owns a party boat business, was jailed for 46 weeks on Friday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court after admitting four sexual offences

A former soldier who sexually assaulted four Jet2 cabin crew during a flight to Tenerife has been jailed.

Joseph McCabe groped and slapped the buttocks of two flight attendants before grabbing a third around the waist and attempting to hug a fourth. A court heard McCabe’s behaviour forced the plane, which had left Edinburgh, to be diverted to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo.

Police there arrested the 40-year-old man and, last month, he admitted the four sexual offences. McCabe, who was a private in the Royal Logistic Corps for five years, was jailed for 46 weeks on Friday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

The court heard McCabe made sexual comments to one woman about her tights and make up, asked her age and where she lived and ripped up a written warning he had been given for his drunken conduct. The former soldier also threw his bank card at an air employee and began dancing in the aisle on the plane in March last year.

READ MORE: Student rapist, 26, jailed after four-year spree of attacks on multiple womenREAD MORE: Woman sexually assaulted at busy city centre bus stop as cops release CCTV

The defendant, who now runs his own construction firm and co-owns a party boat business called The Drunken Anchor, has been handed a lifelong ban from flying with Jet2 and has refused to pay the £5,000 fine the airline had imposed on him.

Sentencing, Sheriff Alison Stirling said the offence had involved “a high level of culpability and a high level of harm”. McCabe, who has two children, was also placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years and was made subject to non-harassment orders banning him from having any contact with the victims for an indefinite period. Solicitor Anna Kocela, defending, said her client is a self-employed building boss and had been drinking excessively at the time of the flight due to a family bereavement.

Previously, prosecutor Miriam Farooq told the court the Jet2 flight took off from Edinburgh Airport bound for Tenerife with around 110 passengers on board at around 8.30am on March 15 last year, reports Daily Record.

Ms Farooq said the flight was packed with families and children and shortly after take off cabin crew had noticed McCabe “making multiple trips to the toilet”.

The fiscal depute said around 90 minutes into the flight a female flight attendant was serving a passenger when she “felt someone behind her touching her buttocks”.

The employee turned round to find McCabe was “looking at her with a smirk on his face” and had asked her “where she bought her tights because he liked them”.

McCabe, from Glasgow, was given a verbal warning on the flight and then ripped up a written warning given to him by the air crew for his shocking behaviour.