Tim Sullivan and Giovanna Dell’Orto
Updated ,first published
Minneapolis: A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis overnight, in a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown in a major American city.
Federal officials claimed the shooting was an act of self-defence and the woman had weaponised her car, but the city’s mayor described the officer’s actions as “reckless” and unnecessary, saying he had seen video of the shooting that directly contradicted the government’s “garbage narrative”.
“They’re already trying to spin this as an action of self-defence,” visibly angry mayor Jacob Frey said. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly – that is bullshit.”
Videos taken by bystanders and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The SUV begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the SUV at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.
It was not clear from the videos if the vehicle made contact with the officer. The SUV then sped into two cars parked on a curb nearby before crashing to a stop. Witnesses screamed obscenities, expressing shock at what they had seen.
WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
Local Democrat senator Tina Smith said the woman shot was a US citizen.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit to Texas, described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him”.
But Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara gave no indication that the 37-year-old driver was trying to harm anyone. He said she was not a target of immigration operations, and had been shot in the head. Preliminary investigations indicated her vehicle was blocking traffic when a federal officer approached on foot, he said.
“The vehicle began to drive off,” he said. “At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
US President Donald Trump said in a social media post he had viewed video footage of the incident and criticised the woman who was shot as acting “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and “then violently, willfully, and viciously” running over the ICE officer.
“The situation is being 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,” Trump wrote. “They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE.”
A dark-coloured SUV with a bullet hole through its windshield and blood splattered across the headrest was seen rammed into a pole on a snowy street after the shooting.
Venus de Mars, who lives near the site of the shooting, described seeing paramedics perform CPR on a woman collapsed next to a snowbank near the crashed car. Shortly afterwards, 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.”
The shooting drew protesters into the streets near the scene, some of whom were met by heavily armed federal agents wearing gas masks who fired chemical irritants at the demonstrators.
The incident happened in a residential neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and 1.6 kilometres from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.
Addressing the media, Frey blasted Noem’s characterisation of the shooting and the federal deployment of more than 2000 officers as part of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, telling ICE officers to “get the f— out of Minneapolis”.
“They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said. “They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets and in this case quite literally killing people.”
However, he also urged residents to remain calm.
The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations carried out in major American cities under the Trump administration. The woman is at least the fifth person killed in a handful of states since 2024.
The Twin Cities have been on edge since DHS announced on Tuesday that it had launched the operation. More than 2000 agents and officers were expected to take part in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents, related to childcare and other social services.
Protesters at the scene after the shooting vented their anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior US Customs and Border Patrol official who has been the face of crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.
In a scene that hearkened back to the Los Angeles and Chicago crackdowns, bystanders heckled the officers and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.
“Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota!” they loudly chanted from behind the police tape.
During her Texas visit, Noem confirmed the DHS had deployed more than 2000 officers to the Twin Cities and they had already made “hundreds and hundreds” of arrests.
Immigration agents have been involved in other similar shootings during the Trump administration’s crackdown.
During “Operation Midway Blitz,” Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in Chicago last year, ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a 38-year-old Mexican national. Gonzalez, a cook and father of two with no criminal record, was shot in his car after agents attempted to arrest him.
A DHS statement said Gonzalez had steered his car at agents, dragging one officer and causing him to fire out of fear for his life. Police bodycam footage obtained by Reuters complicated that narrative, with the ICE agent saying his injuries were “nothing major”.
Border Patrol agents also shot a woman in Chicago in October. DHS said the shooting was in self-defense after the woman, Marimar Martinez, rammed into the agents’ vehicle. But her lawyer said video footage showed the agents hit her car before opening fire.
In December, ICE agents fired at a van carrying two men they were targeting for arrest, leaving one with bullet wounds. A DHS statement said the men drove the van at ICE officers, prompting them to fire in self-defence.
For nearly a year, migrant rights advocates and neighbourhood activists across the Twin Cities have been preparing to mobilise in the event of an immigration enforcement surge. From houses of worship to mobile home parks, they have set up very active online networks, scanned licence plates for possible federal vehicles and bought whistles and other noise-making devices to alert neighbourhoods of any enforcement presence.
On Tuesday night, the Immigration Defence Network, a coalition of groups serving immigrants in Minnesota, held a training session for about 100 people who were willing to hit the streets to monitor the federal enforcement operation.
“I feel like I’m an ordinary person, and I have the ability do something so I need to do it,” Mary Moran told KMSP-TV.
AP
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