Woman shot by ICE in Minneapolis | “A powder keg ready to burst”

Anger is brewing in Minneapolis. On Wednesday, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a woman in the street. The federal authorities assure that the victim was trying to kill the agents, but local elected officials qualify this version as false, calling on the federal agents to leave the city.

The shooting broke out in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, 1 mile from where George Floyd, killed by police in 2020, died as demonstrators gathered at the scene to protest against ICE agents.

Videos taken by witnesses and posted on social media show an ICE agent approaching a car stopped in the middle of a street. He orders the driver to open the door and grabs the handle.

The car moves back about a meter, before moving forward slightly. It was then that another officer, standing in front of the vehicle, promptly fired two shots at the car before backing up when it continued driving.

It is unclear from the videos whether the vehicle hit the officer. We then see him hit two cars parked nearby before stopping, to the horrified cries of indignant witnesses.

Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident, leaves behind a 6-year-old son.

Demonstrations broke out the same day in Minneapolis, the scene of a major immigration crackdown ordered by the Trump administration since Tuesday. In the evening, thousands of people gathered at the event site for a candlelight vigil. In New York, a few hundred people demonstrated in front of ICE offices.

Defense and convictions

Shortly after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared the event an “act of domestic terrorism” against ICE agents, and claimed the victim “attempted to run them over and rammed his vehicle into them.” However, in the videos of the event, the car appears to move away from the ICE agents when they approach it.

“One of our officers reacted quickly and defensively, shooting to protect himself and those around him,” Kristi Noem said during a public outing in Texas.

In a press conference late in the afternoon, the Secretary of Homeland Security said that the ICE agents’ vehicle had gotten stuck in the snow and that the agents were trying to dislodge it, when a “crowd of agitators who had been harassing them since the beginning of the day began to block their path.” She said Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle was blocking the road for officers.

However, the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, strongly denied this description of the events. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everyone that these are lies.”

He also criticized the deployment of more than 2,000 federal agents to the Twin Cities on Tuesday, as part of a crackdown on immigrants led by the Trump administration.

“They tear families apart. They are wreaking havoc on our streets and, in this case, they are literally killing people. They are already trying to present this as an act of self-defense,” he said, calling on the agents to leave.

Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz said he was “outraged” by the event, which he called “predictable” and “avoidable”. He said he was ready to call on the National Guard to intervene, if necessary, but urged demonstrators to remain calm.

“They want a show. We cannot satisfy them. If you protest and exercise your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully, as you always do,” he said at a press conference hours after the shooting.

Unlike Kristi Noem, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara did not indicate that the driver was trying to injure federal agents during a press conference. He reported that she had been shot in the head.

The tension rises

The event represents a major escalation in migration control operations carried out by the Trump administration in American metropolises. This is the fifth death linked to these interventions.

After the shooting on Wednesday, a crowd of demonstrators gathered there to express their anger against local and federal police officers. A familiar scene in Minneapolis, where the first protests of the Black Lives Matter movement took place in 2020.

Such a reaction was “predictable,” according to Valérie Beaudoin, associate researcher at the Observatory on the United States of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair. “We are facing a community that is clearly targeted by the police. (…) People in Minneapolis are not afraid to take to the streets, since George Floyd, so there could be excesses,” she believes.

Furthermore, ICE interventions in several other Democratic cities have already given rise to clashes between police officers and civilians: in Los Angeles, California, the National Guard was even dispatched last June to quell riots against the mass expulsion of immigrants.

“We are in front of a powder keg ready to explode,” adds Valérie Beaudoin.

A mother

The woman killed by the ICE agent was identified as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother. She lived in Minneapolis and had a 6-year-old son. “She was loving, understanding and affectionate. She was an exceptional human being,” her mother, Donna Ganger, told Minnesota Star Tribune.

The victim’s mother assures that her daughter had “nothing to do” with any protest movement against the immigration police. “She was probably terrified,” added Donna Ganger.

According to witnesses at the scene who spoke to local news outlet FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, a doctor was at the scene when Renee Nicole Good was killed. The doctor would have tried to help the young woman, but the ICE agents would have prevented him, according to their testimonies.

Still according to these witnesses, 10 to 15 minutes later, an ambulance arrived, but ICE agents blocked its access to the scene. According to witnesses, officers carried an “inert body” to the end of the street, and the person was transported by ambulance.

With FOX, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The New York TimesCNN and Associated Press