A 37-year-old woman was fatally shot in the head by a masked ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, one day after thousands of federal agents were deployed to Minnesota for a 30-day immigration enforcement “surge.” The Minnesota Star Tribune has identified the woman as Renee Nicole Good, a resident of the Twin Cities.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Donna Ganger, the woman’s mother, told the Star Tribune. “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.”
Video filmed by a witness at the scene shows a large Nissan truck with police lights stopping in front of a Honda Pilot stopped in the middle of a snowy stretch of Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis around 9:30 a.m. Two masked ICE agents exit the truck and approach the Honda.
“Get out of the car. Get out of the fucking car,” one ICE agent can be heard yelling, before grabbing the driver-side door and attempting to yank it open.
The Honda reverses, then goes into drive, while a third ICE agent, approaching from the opposite direction, draws his gun with one hand, and points it directly at the driver. That agent’s other hand is holding up a cell phone, apparently recording the interaction. The agent then fires at least three times into the car as it is driving away. The Honda accelerates before crashing into a parked car on the side of the road. The first two ICE agents retreat to their truck, while the ICE agent who fired his gun approaches the Honda. As he is walking away from the car, cell phone still in hand, he yells: “Hey, call 911.”
“Minneapolis Police Officers responded to the scene. We arrived and found a woman with a gunshot wound to the head,” Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference Wednesday.
“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody, directly: That is bullshit. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”
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In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that ICE agents were “conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE agents and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them. An ICE agent, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem went even further, characterizing the driver’s actions as “domestic terrorism.”
Police Chief O’Hara confirmed that Good, a U.S. citizen, was not the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity. Unconfirmed reports circulating widely on social media have described her as a legal observer. Good’s mother disputed the idea that she would have been involved in actions protesting ICE, saying her daughter was “not part of anything like that at all.”
“It’s obviously very concerning whenever there’s a shooting into a vehicle of someone who’s not armed,” O’Hara said. “At times it is justified, but it is very concerning, and it’s something that most law enforcement agencies in the country train very intensely to try and minimize the risk that law enforcement officers get placed into a situation that the need for deadly force would be necessary.”
President Donald Trump offered a statement on his social media website, Truth Social, describing the driver of the car as “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, viciously, and willfully ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.”
Trump’s description is directly contradicted by the video of the incident, which appears to show the ICE agent hopping backward out of the path of the car, then walking toward the car after the shooting.
“[I]t is hard to believe he is alive, but [he] is now recovering in the hospital,” Trump wrote. He added: “The situation is going to be studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.”
At his press conference Wednesday afternoon, Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, did not mince words. “There’s little I can say again that’ll make this situation better, but I do have a message for our community, for our city — and I have a message for ICE,” he said. “To ICE: get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
The mayor added: “We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city to our culture to our economy are being terrorized. And now, somebody is dead. That’s on you.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, speaking to reporters, echoed that sentiment. “I have a very simple message: we do not need any further help from the federal government. To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You’ve done enough.”
Walz went on to add that he was ready to activate the Minnesota National Guard, and had already sent a notice to guardsmen to prepare to be deployed, if necessary.
“These National Guard troops are our National Guard troops — they’re teachers in your community, they’re business owners, they’re construction professionals. They are Minnesotans,” Walz said. “Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight. We will not take the bait.”
From Rolling Stone US
