U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Democratic congressional candidate Tedra Cobb said Wednesday they condemn the deployment of the U.S. military to police the streets of American cities amid nationwide protests over the police killing of an unarmed black man in Minnesota.

Some of the protests have been violent, with looting, burning and clashing with police.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper also issued a statement Wednesday opposing President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that lets states request support from the federal government and would let the president activate federal troops independent of a state’s request.

While Democrats have largely opposed Trump on this issue, Republicans have been divided on it. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas strongly supports Trump’s move, but Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has publicly worried it would make soldiers “political pawns” and erode public trust in them.

Cobb, of Canton, mentioned the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, based in the North Country at Fort Drum, near Watertown. She said soldiers from there were deployed as part of the 91st Military Police Battalion which is part of the 16th Military Police Brigade.

“Policing American streets isn’t the job these brave men and women signed up to do,” Cobb wrote in a press release. “The 10th Mountain division is the most deployed division in the Army, they fight every day to secure our freedoms and they are uniquely qualified to carry out that mission. I don’t think they or any members of our military should be policing the streets of American cities. The question is why does Elise Stefanik? We can have law and order without shredding the constitution.”

Stefanik, a Republican from Schuylerville, is the North Country’s representative in Congress whom Cobb is challenging in the Nov. 3 election. Stefanik has not made a public statement about military deployment against domestic protesters, although she tweeted Wednesday that New York police need support from the state National Guard.

Cobb, in her press release, named several North Country veterans who oppose military use against protesters.

“As a retired military veteran who served as a first sergeant during Operation Desert Storm, I am angered and alarmed that the president of the United States thinks he can use our military as his own personal army to squash peaceful protestors exercising their First Amendment rights,” Michelle Tolosky of Chazy, a retired first sergeant in the Air Force, said in Cobb’s release. “He thinks it makes him look tough, but it actually makes him look weak and desperate. Instead of leadership, we have an incompetent imposter who is emboldened and enabled by lawmakers who KNOW he is self-serving. Rep. Stefanik is one of those enablers, and an enthusiastic one at that. Betrayed, is how I feel about her.”

“It is a complete disgrace that our military would be used against American citizens,” added Philip Jackson, a Navy veteran from Elizabethtown.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley that using the military against U.S. protesters would “restrict Americans’ First Amendment rights.” She said Trump’s “continued threats to use violence against peaceful protesters and deploy our military to states is outrageous and deeply troubling.”

Gillibrand said the Insurrection Act’s specific, limited conditions are not currently met. Esper also said that Wednesday.

“The Act has historically been invoked under these narrower provisions in order to protect equal access to civil rights, as was the case when federal forces protected the desegregation of public schools in Arkansas in 1957 and in Mississippi and Alabama in 1962 and 1963, respectively,” Gillibrand wrote. “Invoking the Act to restrict Americans’ right to freedom of assembly, speech, and protest under current circumstances would be a significant departure from important historical uses of the law.

“America is not a ‘battlespace’ and protestors should never be ‘dominated’ by the government or the military. Those peacefully protesting are not ‘thugs’ or ‘terrorists’ but are individuals exercising their fundamental Constitutional rights.”