Fatal ICE shooting of woman in Minneapolis sets stage for nation-wide protests

Civil liberties and migrant-rights groups called for nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of an activist in Minnesota by a U.S. immigration agent, as state authorities opened their own investigation into the killing.

Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the country over the weekend, calling for an end to large-scale deployments of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents ordered by President Donald Trump, largely to cities governed by Democrats.

Minneapolis became a major flashpoint of the Republican president’s militarized deportation campaign on Wednesday, when an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a mother of three, while she was sitting in her car on a residential street.

The shooting followed the deployment of about 2,000 federal officers to Minneapolis in what ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), described as the “largest DHS operation ever.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the move as “reckless” and likened it to “governance by reality TV.” According to family members and local activists, Good had been participating in one of several “neighborhood patrols” aimed at tracking and documenting ICE activity.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Good had been “impeding” and “stalking” ICE agents throughout the day, and claimed the officer fired in self-defense after she attempted to ram him with her vehicle in what they described as an “act of domestic terrorism.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey disputed that account, citing bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government’s “garbage narrative.” Civil liberties advocates said the footage showed federal agents lacked justification for using deadly force.

State-Federal tensions

Amid sharply conflicting accounts, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening a separate criminal investigation, independent of a federal probe led by the FBI.

Some Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, argued that state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to charge a federal officer. Legal experts, however, say federal immunity in such cases is not automatic.

The crisis prompted Walz, an outspoken Trump critic who labeled the president and his Republican allies “weird” during his own vice-presidential run last year, to place the state’s National Guard on alert.

Tensions escalated further on Thursday when a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and a woman during a vehicle stop. DHS said the driver had attempted to “weaponize” his car and run over agents, echoing its account of the Minneapolis shooting.

DHS later identified the wounded pair as suspected Venezuelan gang associates who were in the United States illegally, and alleged the woman had been involved in a prior shootout in Portland, though it provided no evidence. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said he could not accept the government’s version of events without an independent investigation.

The Minneapolis deployment followed Trump’s recent denunciations of Walz and Minnesota’s large Somali immigrant population over alleged fraud linked to nonprofit social service providers dating back to 2020.

Video evidence

Good was killed just a few blocks from where George Floyd died during a police arrest in May 2020, an incident that ignited months of nationwide racial justice protests during Trump’s first term.

Bystander video shows masked officers approaching Good’s Honda SUV as it sat at an angle in the street, partially blocking traffic. One agent is seen ordering her out of the vehicle and grabbing the driver-side door handle as the car moves forward. Another officer jumps back and fires three shots into the front of the vehicle as it passes.

Body-camera footage from the officer who fired, identified through official statements and public records as Jonathan Ross, shows Good appearing calm moments before the shooting. She is heard saying, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” shortly before Ross opens fire as she steers away from him.

Noem said Ross was treated at a local hospital for unspecified injuries and later released. Video footage appears to show the vehicle’s front bumper passing Ross before he fired, and it remains unclear whether the car made contact with him. Ross is seen remaining on his feet and walking afterward, contradicting Trump’s claim on social media that Good “ran over the ICE officer.”

The two DHS-related shootings this week have sparked protests in Minneapolis, Portland, and other U.S. cities, with many more demonstrations planned for Saturday and Sunday under the banner “ICE Out For Good.”

The rallies are being organized by a coalition that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, groups that were also prominent in last year’s “No Kings” protests against Trump.