Questions, protests, pain follow after ICE agent kills a woman in Minneapolis
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Widespread protests are expected Thursday across the Twin Cities. Protests to date have been largely peaceful.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension says it’s no longer part of the investigation into the killing of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE agent.
Minneapolis Public Schools canceled classes the rest of the week amid security concerns after U.S. Border Patrol agents descended on Roosevelt High School.
It started as a winter driving mishap — federal agents trying to pull their vehicle out of snow slush Wednesday morning on a slippery day in south Minneapolis. Then it spiraled into tragedy when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman.
Federal authorities quickly called the shooting justified, saying the woman, later identified as 37-year-old Renee Good, tried to run down ICE agents with her vehicle and that the agent fired to protect his life and the lives of other officers.
Bystander video, however, offered a more complicated story that raised questions about the federal narrative. Eyewitnesses said agents gave Good conflicting orders about whether to stay or go, and that she appeared to just want to leave the scene.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the federal version of events “bull—” and “garbage.” Gov. Tim Walz said he and others had been warning that the intensifying ICE operations in the Twin Cities the past few weeks were a danger to public safety.
“Today, that recklessness cost someone their life,” Walz said Wednesday, adding that it was “predictable and avoidable.”
Walz put the Minnesota National Guard on alert for possible mobilization, and he pleaded for people to protest peacefully and not force a confrontation. “They want a show,” he said of the Trump administration. “We can’t give it to them.”
Vigils for Good popped up across Minnesota Wednesday night as the state found itself again at the center of tense tragedy with a national and global audience looking on.
Eyewitness heard conflicting orders from ICE
ICE agents were returning to their headquarters Wednesday morning following an operation when one of their vehicles became stuck in the snow, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters late Wednesday.
Noem said Good was among a “mob of agitators” that were harassing and impeding agents during the day in Minneapolis.
Bystander video shows Good’s SUV at an angle on the street. She has her window down as a vehicle drives past her. Seconds after that car passes, ICE agents pull up in a truck and approach Good’s SUV quickly. One agent tells her to get out of the car and reaches for the door handle. She puts the SUV in reverse, backs up slowly and briefly and then moves forward.
An ICE agent moves directly in front of her vehicle as it starts to move forward. He draws his gun, aims and fires as the vehicle’s front tires turn to the right. The agent shoots again into the driver’s side window as the SUV moves past him before crashing into a nearby light pole.
Caitlin Callenson, an eyewitness who recorded video of the incident, said she was walking down Portland Avenue with her partner when she saw people she assumed were ICE agents trying to “zoom their car out of the snowbank but were just stuck.”
She said other ICE vehicles showed up, leading neighbors to believe it might be an ICE enforcement action. People showed up, and some began blowing whistles.
“People in our neighborhood have been terrorized by ICE for six weeks. We want our neighbors safe, and so, when we see a group of ICE vehicles, people in the community are showing up and saying, ‘This is not OK,’” she said.
Callenson said the person later identified as Good drove her vehicle perpendicular to the lanes of traffic on Portland Avenue, south of the ICE vehicles. By that point, Callenson said, the ICE vehicle stuck in snow had been freed.
She said that ICE agents gave Good conflicting orders, with one agent ordering her to drive away from the scene while another yelled for her to get out of her car as he reached for the door handle.
“Some of them were leaving, and they just went around her, but ICE gave her orders to leave, while at the same time, another ICE person said, ‘Get out of the car,’ and he reached for her door handle. And then there was an ICE agent in front of her vehicle. So it was difficult for her to leave, as she'd been ordered to do,” Callenson said.
“She turned her steering wheel toward the right. The person was grabbing her door handle, the ICE officer who was in front of her vehicle shot once from the front and twice from the side, hitting her maybe three feet away at the max. Because she was shot, and she was already trying to leave, her foot was on the accelerator, and she crashed into a telephone pole.”
Another neighborhood resident and witness to Wednesday morning’s fatal shooting told MPR News that Good “posed absolutely no threat to any of these agents.”
“She appeared to me to be trying to move her vehicle south on Portland Avenue to kind of get out of the way of the activity that was happening,” said Betsy, who asked to be identified only by her first name.
After the shots were fired, Betsy said neighbors wanted to provide aid to the woman but were told to back up by federal officers. She said she did not see those agents try to help the injured woman.
‘We’ve dreaded this moment’
The massive ICE presence in the Twin Cities is part of what the Homeland Security Department calls its "largest immigration operation ever.”
The initial ICE statement on the shooting Wednesday read, in part: “Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”
Noem said the FBI is investigating the incident. She said one agent was treated at a hospital and released.
Minneapolis police and Hennepin County sheriff's deputies showed up to secure the scene. Political officials pushed them to get federal agents out of the area. As ICE left, they pepper sprayed people and shot off tear gas as they were pelted with snow.
Brian O’Hara, the city police chief, said there was “nothing to indicate that this woman was the target of any law enforcement investigation,” adding that she was “in her car and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement.”
Walz said that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is also investigating the matter. It’s not clear if the state agency will work in tandem with the FBI.
Noem said she talked Wednesday with Walz, someone she’s known from their time in Congress and while she served as governor of South Dakota. “We discussed what happened here today,” she said. “We have two very different viewpoints on what happened.”
Frey and Walz on Wednesday called for ICE to end its surge and leave the Twin Cities.
Said Walz: “We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis.”
This is a recap of breaking news on Wednesday, Jan. 7. Breaking news stories are constantly evolving as we learn more information. For a look at that timeline, view our live updates from that day.
