An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman Wednesday during an immigration-related operation in Minneapolis in which she did not appear to be the target, local and federal officials said.
Dueling narratives emerged over what led to the shooting. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed the woman “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed back on DHS’ narrative at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, saying, “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” referring to ICE. “Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is b—s—.”
Witnesses described seeing the woman in the vehicle trying to flee officers when she was shot, disputing the notion that she was trying to run officers over. Police described her as a “middle-aged white woman” who did not appear to be the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity.
Immigration enforcement officers were conducting targeted operations in Minneapolis when the shooting happened, but it’s unclear what operation ICE was conducting in that particular neighborhood.
Several video clips of the incident emerged on social media.
In one video, a gray pickup truck is seen pulling up to a burgundy SUV stopped perpendicular to the truck as someone shouts “get the f— out of our neighborhood.” Agents get out of the truck, and one walks up to the SUV and yanks on the driver’s door handle, ordering the driver to get out. The SUV reverses.
Another agent is standing near the front of the SUV as it pulls forward. The agent appears to draw his firearm, and as the SUV drives forward in his direction, he moves backward, shooting into the SUV as it drives off, the video shows.
In another video showing a different angle, the agent appears to be knocked back as the SUV drives forward before it crashes into a parked car and hits a light pole. President Donald Trump attached the video clip showing that angle to a post on Truth Social, saying that the woman driving was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and that it was hard to believe the agent survived the incident.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference Wednesday evening that the ICE agent was “hit by the vehicle” driven by the woman who was shot. He went to the hospital and was released, she said.
Noem said the officer, whom officials have not yet identified, had been attacked before while on the job.
“The very same officer who was attacked today had previously been dragged by an anti-ICE rioter who had rammed him with a car and dragged him back in June. He sustained injuries at that time, as well,” she said.
Noem said at a news conference earlier in the day that the agents’ vehicles got stuck in the snow and that they were trying to push them out when the woman “attacked them.”
“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” she said, without providing further evidence.
At the mayor’s news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressed concern about the tactics used by ICE agents.
“I do not know the exact circumstances of the shooting, but I would tell you, in any professional law enforcement agency in the country … it’s obviously very concerning whenever there’s a shooting into a vehicle of someone who’s not armed,” he said, saying that at times it could be justified but that “most law enforcement agencies in the country have trained very intensely to try and minimize the risk” of using deadly force.
Aidan Perzana, 31, said that he witnessed the incident and that it didn’t look like the woman was trying to run over an agent.
“I heard that Noem is trying to say they were trying to run down an officer. There was plenty of space between the officers at that point for the vehicle to make it through,” he told NBC News, adding that it looked as though the driver was trying to flee.
Emily Heller, 39, wasn’t even dressed when she heard whistles alerting the neighborhood that ICE agents were in the area Wednesday morning. When she walked out to her porch, she said, she saw six or seven ICE vehicles and a person who had parked perpendicular to traffic.
Heller said she saw agents exit their cars and tell the driver to leave, to “get out of here.”
“And then they went up to her car and started trying to open her door, and that’s when I’m sure she got spooked and tried to flee,” Heller said. “So she reversed a little bit and then angled her wheels so she could drive away. And as she was trying to move forward, one of the ICE agents stepped in front of her vehicle and reached across the hood and fired his weapon about three or four times and shot her in the face.”
Aidan Perzana’s wife, Grace Perzana, 32, said that the family has lived in the neighborhood 2½ years and that “we love it.”
“We are really happy here. We have a giant shark statue in our front yard, and our neighbor has a giant T-Rex statue,” she said. “There is a lot of community art, a lot of people having barbecues with music in their backyards.”
Residents and locals gathered in the street after the shooting, chanting and throwing snowballs in the direction of federal agents, NBC affiliate KARE reported. Law enforcement officers deployed pepper spray and tear gas.
Trump has unleashed immigration agents in cities across America, who have been employing increasingly aggressive tactics. The push has ramped up tensions with local officials in some cities and communities that are increasingly protesting the efforts.
In September, an ICE agent fatally shot a man during a traffic stop in the Chicago area. His family called for justice, and local police said the FBI had been investigating the death.
Since they arrived in Minneapolis in early December, ICE officers and agents have arrested roughly 1,400 people, McLaughlin has said. That is a significant increase from the roughly 300 who had been arrested by Dec. 12.
DHS this week sent hundreds more officers and agents to bolster immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, posting on social media that it is waging “the largest DHS operation ever” in Minnesota.
The immigration enforcement operation will add up to 2,100 officers, according to two senior DHS officials. The administration began swelling the numbers Sunday and planned to continue adding forces Wednesday, the officials said. That total encompasses 1,500 enforcement and removal officers and 600 Homeland Security Investigations agents.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon following the shooting, Frey, the mayor, told ICE agents to “get the f— out of Minneapolis.”
The rush of more enforcement follows the posting of a video by a conservative content creator the day after Christmas that alleged that Somali-run day care centers in Minneapolis were defrauding American taxpayers by taking federal grant money and not providing any services to children.
The FBI surged investigators in the city to look into the allegations soon after the video was posted and HSI has been knocking on Somali businesses’ doors since last week. The state of Minnesota concluded from its on-site checks of 10 Somali day care centers targeted in the video that they were operating normally, with children at every site except one, which wasn’t yet open to investigators when they arrived to investigate.
Grace Perzana said she didn’t believe there were many people of Somali descent on the street where Wednesday’s shooting happened, but she said she does have many “Latinx” neighbors.
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