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 door 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 towards 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.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara gave no indication that the woman was trying to harm anyone at the time of the shooting and said she had been shot in the head. Preliminary investigations indicated her vehicle was blocking traffic when a federal officer approached on foot, he said.
A bullet hole is seen in the windshield of a car at the scene of a fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis.Credit: AP
“The vehicle began to drive off,” he said. “At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
President Donald Trump said in a social media post he had viewed video footage of the incident and criticised the woman shot as acting “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and “then violently, wilfully, 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.
A federal agent sprays a protester with a chemical agent at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis.Credit: AP
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,” 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.
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, as did state Governor Tim Walz, who criticised the immigration crackdown but called on people to protest peacefully.
“Do not take the bait,” he said. “Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law.”
He said the shooting was “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable”.
Photographer King Demetrius Pendleton has his eyes flushed after being hit with chemical irritants in Minneapolis.Credit: AP
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.
Law enforcement agents at the scene of the shooting.Credit: AP
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-defence 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.
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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 caravan 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 to something so I need to do it,” Mary Moran told KMSP-TV.
AP, Reuters
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