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Another round of protests were planned for Friday in Minneapolis over the killing of a local woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major city, a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Ore.
Hundreds of people protesting the Wednesday shooting of Renee Nicole Good marched in freezing rain on Thursday night down one of Minneapolis’s major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ICE off our streets.” The day began with a charged protest outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.
City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets around the scene where the ICE officer shot Good as she tried to drive away. City officials said they would allow a makeshift shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three to remain.
The shooting in Portland, Ore., took place outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. A man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, were shot inside a vehicle, and their conditions were not immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed, as hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building.
Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking them to move from the street to the sidewalk, to allow traffic to flow.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis amid the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown, and now outrage is flaring over colliding narratives of what actually happened. Andrew Chang breaks down video evidence moment by moment and compares it against the rules governing the use of force and self-defence.
Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
Just as it did following Good’s shooting, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties, who was involved in a recent shooting, tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn’t immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good’s was.
“The agent took immediate action to defend himself and others, shooting them,” Homeland Security said in a post on X Friday.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defence and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.
Vice-President JD Vance said the shooting was justified and Good was a “victim of left-wing ideology.”
“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it is a tragedy of her own making,” Vance said, noting that the officer who killed her was injured by a vehicle while making an arrest last June.
But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying video recordings show the self-defence argument is “garbage.”
Union leaders demand ICE agents stay away from schools
Education Minnesota and union leaders from schools across the state called on ICE to stay away from schools in a news conference on Friday.
“We have seen ICE agents in Roseville circling school property, just waiting for families to pick up their children,” Education Minnesota president Monica Byron told reporters.
“In greater Minnesota, students in St. Cloud, St. James and Rochester are afraid to go to school for fear of being harassed, assaulted or worse, by the very people our government was set to protect us,” Byron said.
The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the Twin Cities immigration crackdown, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.
It provoked an immediate response in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of people turning up to the scene to vent their outrage at the ICE officers and the school district cancelling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.
Hundreds of people continue to visit the memorial for Renee Nicole Good, 37, the day after she was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.
Good’s death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests took place or were expected this week in many large U.S. cities.
The Minnesota agency that investigates officer-involved shootings said Thursday that it was informed that the FBI and U.S. Justice Department would not work with it, effectively ending any role for the state to determine if crimes were committed. Noem said the state has no jurisdiction.
“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands,” said Drew Evans, head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Senators push DOJ, FBI to work with local authorities
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith called for a thorough, objective and impartial investigation of the fatal shooting in Minneapolis.
“That requires full co-operation with state investigators and local authorities,” the letter read.
The Hennepin County district attorney, which oversees the Minneapolis region, also asked the public to submit video and other evidence related to Good’s shooting directly to her office at a news conference on Friday.
Federal officials declined to identify the agent by name and CBC News has been unable to independently verify the agent’s identity, but the details Vance and Noem previously supplied closely match those in federal court documents of an incident involving an ICE officer in Bloomington last June.
Court documents reviewed by CBC News say an agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, was dragged as officers tried to arrest Roberto Carlos Muñoz. Muñoz, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had been criminally convicted of sexually assaulting his teenage stepdaughter three years prior.
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