Fatal ICE shooting of Minneapolis activist sets stage for nationwide 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 of the killing.
Protest organizers said more than 1,000 weekend events were planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ordered by President Donald Trump, mostly to cities led by Democratic politicians.
Minneapolis became a major flashpoint of the Republican president’s militarized deportation roundups on Wednesday, when an ICE officer shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Good, behind the wheel of her car on a residential street.
The violence came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the “largest DHS operation ever.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a “reckless” example of “governance by reality TV.”
At the time, Good was participating in one of numerous “neighborhood patrols” that track, monitor and record ICE activities, according to family and local activists.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Good was “impeding” and “stalking” ICE agents all day, and that the officer opened fire in self-defense when she tried to ram her car into him in an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, pointed to bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government’s “garbage narrative.” Civil liberties advocates said the video showed federal agents lacked any justification for using deadly force.
Amid the sharply differing accounts of the shooting, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening their own criminal inquiry of the incident separate from a federal investigation led by the FBI.
The scheduled rallies were being organized by a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of “No Kings” protests against Trump last year.
