Understanding the ICE shooting in Minneapolis

On Wednesday, a US immigration agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in the city of Minneapolis. Videos of the incident were quickly shared online and sparked overnight protests.

Two other people were shot by federal immigration officers outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon on Thursday afternoon. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the shootings in both Minneapolis and Portland were in self-defence after drivers attempted to run ICE agents over. Video of the second incident has not yet been made available to verify that claim.

Xavier Greenwood talked to Hugh Tomlinson, The Observer’s US correspondent, to get a better understanding of what happened.

XG Hi Hugh. It’s Thursday morning in Minneapolis. What do we know about yesterday’s shooting?

HT Even in a week that started with the aftermath of the raid on Venezuela and the renewed threats to seize Greenland, this incident in Minnesota suddenly looks like the biggest story in the US. An ICE operation was under way to seize undocumented migrants in Minneapolis, during which a woman in an SUV apparently attempted to turn around and pull away from the area. She was confronted by ICE agents and continued to pull away. At this point one agent fired three shots, hitting the woman in the head.

XG Who was the woman killed?

HT She’s been named as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, born in Colorado and a US citizen. She was reportedly an award-winning poet.

XG Do we know what she was doing on the scene?

HT There have been claims by city leaders that she was observing. Many of these ICE protests have been filmed and documented by civilian observers.

XG Can you describe what videos of the incident show?

HT ICE agents confront Good in her vehicle on a snowy street. She attempts to pull out of a line of cars, then one agent goes in front of the car and draws his gun as she continues to turn. He fires one shot through the front window and two more through the side window.

From the videos we’ve seen, you can hear protesters screaming at him. The car lurches up the street a few yards before crashing into another parked car. Another video appears to show a man identifying himself as a doctor being blocked from the scene by ICE agents.

XG What has Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said about this?

HT She responded immediately by denouncing Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism”. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put out a statement saying that the ICE officer feared for his life and fired defensive shots to protect his fellow officers and the public. Those claims are denied by witnesses to the shooting and city officials.

XG Was Donald Trump’s response similar to Noem’s?

HT Yes. Trump leapt to the defence of ICE and its agents. He said the video of the shooting was “horrible” but that didn’t stop him from calling Good a “professional agitator”. He claimed that she ran over the officer and blamed the “radical left” for “threatening, assaulting and targeting ICE agents on a daily basis”.

XG What about the agent who shot the woman?

HT He has not been formally named. [He has subsequently been identified as Jonathan E Ross, a 10-year veteran of ICE who served as a National Guardsman in Iraq.] Government officials claimed in the immediate aftermath of the shooting that he had been taken to hospital for treatment. But video footage shows him apparently checking on the victim in the car, then walking back up the street unharmed and adjusting the mask over his face.

XG How has the role of ICE expanded in Trump’s second term?

HT ICE is poised to become the biggest law enforcement agency in the US. It received billions of dollars in new funding from Trump’s tax bill last summer and has done a massive recruitment drive to support the administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigration.

The agency has held careers fairs across the country, waived age restrictions and accelerated training to get agents onto the street as quickly as possible. This has prompted allegations that these new recruits are unprepared for work in the field. But that recruitment drive has been effective. ICE deported hundreds of thousands of migrants in the first year of the administration.

XG What has this looked like on the ground in terms of enforcement?

HT It has been chaotic. Already, prior to the incident in Minneapolis, we’ve seen a backlash to ICE raids all over the country. It was reported back in the summer that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and architect of the administration’s deportation programme, demanded the agency meet a minimum quota of 3,000 arrests a day. That prompted ICE to launch into more aggressive tactics in several Democrat-held cities.

In June, we saw agents seize dozens of day labourers looking for work at a Home Depot in central Los Angeles. This raid and others in the city prompted massive protests. ICE vehicles and agents were attacked.

We’ve seen similar incidents in Chicago, Charlotte and Washington DC with masked men who often refuse to identify themselves, or say what agency they work for, snatching people off the street. Trump has responded by sending hundreds of marines and National Guard troops into LA, and deploying the National Guard in DC and other cities.

Immigration officers have been involved in more than a dozen shootings before this incident.

XG What about in Minneapolis?

HT The DHS had heralded this as the largest ever ICE operation, with about 2,000 agents deployed in the crackdown. It was, in part, targeting alleged fraud in the Somali community.

XG How have Democrats responded to the shooting?

HT It has been condemned by Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, who issued a warning order to ready the state’s National Guard to deploy to the city in the wake of the shooting. There’s also been condemnation from Democrat civil rights groups across the board.

XG What about the Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey?

HT It’s interesting to see him back in the national spotlight. He steered the city through the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. He got some criticism from local Democrats when he refused to bow to calls to defund police in the city, but earned praise for calling on the officer who killed Floyd to be charged with murder. After yesterday’s shooting, he told ICE to “get the fuck out of the city” and said the government’s account was “bullshit”.

XG And what has been the response on the streets of the city and beyond?

HT We’ve seen a huge ramp-up in tensions, which raises concerns about where the country goes next. But there was a massive vigil at the site of the shooting in Minneapolis last night and protests in cities across the US. Inevitably we’ve seen calls to abolish ICE from some senior Democrats and calls for Noem to be impeached.

Republicans have responded by defending ICE. I was struck by one comment from Texas congressman Wesley Hunt. His line: “When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.” This really underscores how febrile the situation has become.

XG Finally, how does the shooting fit into the bigger immigration picture in the US?

HT Noem has said ICE operations will continue in Minneapolis. The Somali fraud allegations have become a real touchstone on the political right here, so that crackdown will continue, which is certain to raise tensions in the city and across the country.

The deportation scheme is already getting bogged down. Trump has withdrawn efforts to deploy troops to several cities – for now. Several Democrat leaders have called on civilians not to give Trump the pretext to declare martial law in blue cities, including Minneapolis, but this incident has only increased the likelihood of further confrontations and further civil unrest.

Photograph by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images