An ICE immigration officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman on Wednesday in Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, a state bordering Canada. Mayor Jacob Frey said in a press conference that he saw video footage of the incident and that the officer used reckless force. The responsible Ministry of Internal Security says that the woman wanted to drive her car into the officers. The shooter is said to have acted in self-defense and to have prevented an “act of terror”. The mayor’s response to that statement: “Crap.” Governor Tim Walz also writes on X: “I have seen the images. Don’t believe in the propaganda machine.”
Go on social media images of the incident around. It shows that a red-brown Honda Pilot is standing across the road, between several stationary and moving cars. When two men in camouflage clothing – apparently ICE agents – approach the Honda from a newly arrived car with a flashing light behind the windshield, the driver puts the car in reverse and drives slowly backwards, while the officers pull on the door handle. Then the Honda drives forward, making a bend around a stationary car. That’s when an ICE agent standing in front of the car fires two shots. The Honda then crashes into a parked car.
Somali community branded
The deadly incident comes amid a drastic escalation of ICE operations in Minneapolis, a city that has come under President Trump’s radar for various reasons. Following a large-scale fraud scandal involving childcare subsidies, the government has pointed an accusing finger at the large Somali community in Minneapolis.
Trump had already branded that community in December, when he spoke at a press conference about the deaths of two members of the National Guard in Washington, murdered by an Afghan man, in the same breath said that both Afghans and Somalis should leave the United States. „What do Somalis have to do with this Afghan man,” a reporter asked. “Nothing,” Trump said, “but Somalis are causing a lot of problems.” As far as the president is concerned, they should “go back to where they came from.” According to him, it is “not for nothing that it is such a bad country.” He announced in December that he would send the immigration police to Minneapolis.
‘Largest deportation operation ever’
The minister came on Tuesday Kristi Noem of Homeland Security to the city to support a new wave of ICE deportations. After the shooting, Noem said in a press statement that ICE officers at the scene “were trying to push their car out of the snow when the woman attacked them.” In any case, that is not what the images show.
News channel CBS reported on Tuesday that two thousand agents had arrived in the state of Minnesota for “the largest deportation operation ever.” That is more than double the capacity of the local police. Migrants were immediately detained.
As with ICE operations in other parts of the country, officers in Minneapolis have also been followed in their work by bystanders. Some said they welcomed their presence. Others mainly filmed the officers, who act masked and unidentifiable.
Civil rights organizations have repeatedly expressed concern about the resulting heavy-handed arrests and deportations without judicial intervention. In some cases, judges have described deportations as unlawful.
‘ICE causes chaos’
The shooting death of a woman, whose name had not yet been released Wednesday evening, has drawn strong condemnation from Mayor Jacob Frey. He said, like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz a day earlier, that the massive presence of the masked immigration police does not make the city and its residents safer, but rather leads to “chaos and distrust.”
Frey vowed that the woman’s death must be thoroughly investigated. “We feared something like this would happen,” he said. And he had “a message for ICE,” which he accused of causing the incident: “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
Frey was also mayor of Minneapolis when the city became the scene of large-scale riots in 2020 after the death of detainee George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. After several nights of violence, Governor Walz gave permission to deploy the National Guard. The riots were then suppressed.
The journalistic principles of NRC