ICE agent shoots and kills woman during Minneapolis immigration raid | News

An ICE officer has fatally shot a woman in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis amid a protest over a large-scale immigration operation.

Details of the killing in the largest city in the state of Minnesota were still emerging on Wednesday, but video of the incident showed a dark-coloured SUV blocking traffic before being surrounded by law enforcement agents. The vehicle then briefly backs up and then drives forward, as one officer opens fire.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin quickly accused the woman of targeting the agents, saying she had “weaponised” ⁠her vehicle.

“An ICE officer, fearing for ​his ‌life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and ‌the safety of ‌the public, ⁠fired defensive shots,” McLaughlin wrote in a post ‌on X. She further called the attack an “act of domestic terrorism”.

The city’s Mayor Jacob Frey was among those swiftly pushing back on the characterisation, saying the ICE agent “recklessly” shot the woman. He added that immigration agents are “causing chaos in our city”.

“They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets and in this case, quite literally killing people,” Frey said at a news conference.

“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defence. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bulls**t,” the mayor said.

At a news conference, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also decried the shooting as “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable”.

He urged anyone participating in protests to remain peaceful, adding he had put the state’s National Guard on alert.

“I feel your anger,” he added.

Late Wednesday, the mother of the fatally shot women identified her to the Minneapolis Star Tribune as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

“She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” Donna Ganger told the newspaper.

Dramatic escalation

Authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), were investigating the scene of the shooting, where the SUV could be seen with a bullet hole through its windshield and blood splattered ‌across the headrest late Wednesday.

Venus de Mars, 65, a nearby resident, described seeing paramedics perform CPR on a woman collapsed next to a snowbank near the crashed car. Shortly ‌after, they loaded her into an ambulance that drove away without its sirens on.

“There’s been lots of ICE activity, but nothing like this,” de Mars said. “I’m so angry. I’m so angry , and I feel helpless.”

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reported Minnesota Public Radio quoted a witness saying, “ICE agents were telling the driver, a woman, to get out of here. She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of the car, and he pulled out a gun.”

The witness said “he [an agent] reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face, like three or four times”.

The incident marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major US cities under the Trump administration.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul have been on edge since DHS announced on Tuesday it launched the operation with 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

Protesters quickly gathered at the scene of the killing. Some were met by heavily armed federal agents wearing gas masks who fired chemical munitions at the demonstrators.

Those gathered shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota!”.

The area where the shooting occurred is a modest neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and 1.6km (one mile) from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

Floyd’s killing sparked nation-wide protests against police brutality.

Shooting condemned

The administration of US President Donald Trump has faced scrutiny over its mass deportation efforts, which have seen federal law enforcement flooded to communities across the country.

As the administration has launched a recruitment campaign to quickly grow the ranks of ICE officers, agents have repeatedly faced scrutiny over their conduct and training.

A tax bill passed last year by the Republican dominated-Congress, and signed into law by Trump, allocates $75bn for ICE’s personnel, enforcement and detention budget over the next four years. The funding makes ICE the most resourced law enforcement agency in the country, with its budget far surpassing the military budgets of most countries in the world.

Since Trump began his second term on January 20, 2025, the Trace news site has documented at least 28 instances where federal agents opened fire or brandished a gun during an immigration enforcement operation.

At least four people have been killed and five people have been wounded in the incidents.

In a post Truth Social, Trump claimed, without evidence, that the woman killed on Wednesday was a “professional agitator”. He broadly blamed the situation on the “Radical left”, an amorphous label he regularly applies to critics of his policies.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who represents Minneapolis, was among those decrying the immigration operation and its deadly consequence.

“You’re lying. There was no attempt to run the officer over and no ICE agents appear to be hurt,” she wrote on X, where she also posted a widely-circulated video of the shooting.

“Get out of our city,” she added.