By Tim Evans, Tom Hals and Kanishka Singh
Minneapolis — The fatal shooting of a 37-year-old mother by a US immigration agent has put the city of Minneapolis and much of the US on edge, with the potential of becoming another flashpoint in a polarised nation.
State and federal officials offered starkly different accounts of the shooting, in which an unidentified officer killed Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen, in her car on Wednesday while immigration officers were carrying out what federal officials said was the “largest operation ever” by the department of homeland security (DHS).
With 2,000 federal officers deployed across the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, thousands of people gathered in Minneapolis to protest against the shooting, while demonstrations were called in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, Orlando, and Columbus, Ohio.
The Minnesota operation, which includes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, is part of President Donald Trump’s nationwide crackdown on migrants and a politically charged investigation into fraud allegations against some Minnesota nonprofit groups in the Somali community.
At least 56 people have pleaded guilty since federal prosecutors under the administration of previous president Joe Biden undertook an investigation of childcare and other social service programmes in the Somali community.
Trump’s DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, described Wednesday’s incident as an act of domestic terrorism, saying an experienced officer followed his training with an act of self-defence.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey immediately disputed the federal government’s account and blamed Trump for what they called an unnecessary provocation by deploying federal law enforcement.
“It was not ‘domestic terrorism’. It was state-sanctioned violence. A family will forever live with the pain caused by the admin’s reckless and deadly actions,” Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American and member of Congress representing Minneapolis, who is a frequent target of Trump’s political barbs, said on X.
Deepening divide
The competing narratives highlight the political polarisation of the US, where Trump’s supporters endorse his version of events and opponents contend his assertions are often provably false.
Video shows masked officers approaching Good’s car, which was stopped at an unusual angle on a Minneapolis street. The car then backs up and pulls away, briefly driving in the direction of the officer who opened fire at close range.
The video does not appear to show contact or any sign that the officer was wounded, though Noem said he was treated at a hospital and released, while Trump said on social media the woman “ran over the ICE officer”.
Trump administration officials said the incident was part of a pattern of anti-Trump demonstrators endangering ICE officers, but critics say they saw a woman attempting to evade masked and armed men and the vehicle’s front wheels turned away from the shooter.
While Trump and Noem drew immediate conclusions that the officer was the subject of an intentional attack, border czar Tom Homan was more cautious.
“It would be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation. Let the investigation play out and hold people accountable based on the investigation,” he told CBS News.
The FBI and Minnesota state officials are investigating. The ICE officer would be protected from being charged by local prosecutors if he was found to have acted within the scope of his official federal duties, and any legal case would probably come down to whether he reasonably feared for his life, said Caren Morrison, a law professor at Georgia State College of Law. Morrison said cases involving vehicles tended to favour officers because a car could be considered a deadly weapon.
Minnesota law allows the use of deadly force by an officer only if an objectively reasonable officer would believe that doing so was necessary to protect the officer or others from immediate death or serious harm. Federal law has a similar standard.
Minnesota civil rights attorney Paul Applebaum said it is unclear who, if anyone, would prosecute the officer. “The possibility of the officer being prosecuted by Pam Bondi are slim to none,” Applebaum said of the US attorney-general, a Trump loyalist. He said if state officials sought to charge the officer it would set up a constitutional conflict between state and federal government.
Federal agents are generally immune from state prosecution for actions taken as part of their official duties. Courts have increasingly narrowed the ability to sue federal officers for damages for civil rights violations to the point it was “almost an empty exercise”, Applebaum said.
‘Loving and affectionate’
The Minneapolis city council said Good was “out caring for her neighbours this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government”.
She was the mother of a six-year-old boy, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, citing the boy’s grandfather. Good’s mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter was “extremely compassionate”, and was not the type of person to confront ICE agents. “She’s taken care of people all her life,” her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Star Tribune. “She was loving, forgiving and affectionate.”
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