Minneapolis ICE shooting: Woman dies after federal agent opens fire on her vehicle amid immigration crackdown
Minneapolis ICE shooting: Woman dies after federal agent opens fire on her vehicle amid immigration crackdown

A federal immigration officer shot and killed a woman during an incident in Minneapolis on Wednesday, authorities said.

The victim was later identified by members of the Minneapolis City Council as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old resident of the city.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the shooting occurred when a female motorist attempted to “run over” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on a residential street in south Minneapolis.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem referred to the incident as “an act of domestic terrorism.”

Videos posted online and witness accounts cast doubt on that official narrative, however. Footage of the shooting appears to show the driver attempting to drive away from ICE officers as they tried to pull her from her car. Exact details of how the shooting unfolded remain unclear.

“I’ve seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wrote on X.

The state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, released a statement in which he wrote, “there’s a lot we don’t know at this time.” He added that anyone who broke the law as part of the incident will be “held accountable.”

A witness who spoke to Minneapolis Public Radio said she saw a car blocking traffic on Portland Avenue; it appeared to be part of a protest against federal law enforcement operations. The witness said she heard ICE agents telling the driver to “get out of here.”

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” the witness said.

Behind yellow crime-scene tape, a bullet hole can be seen in the windshield of a SUV.
A bullet hole is seen in a windshield as law enforcement officers work at the scene of a shooting involving federal law enforcement agents on Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Tom Baker/AP)

On Wednesday afternoon, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters the woman who was shot had a head wound and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

“We’re demanding ICE to leave the city immediately,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey wrote in a social media post. “We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities.”

In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Frey described the shooting as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed." He dismissed the federal government's description of it as "bulls***," saying he had watched the videos circulating online.

“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” Frey added. "And we collectively are going to do everything possible to get to the bottom of this to get justice, and to make sure that there is an investigation that is conducted in full."

Wednesday’s shooting happened a day after the Department of Homeland Security announced it had dramatically escalated its enforcement efforts in the Twin Cities. “The largest DHS operation ever is happening right now in Minnesota,” the department said on social media. A person briefed on the operation told the Associated Press that DHS planned to dispatch as many as 2,000 officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem appeared in a video accompanying federal agents.

Anti-ICE protests broke out in response.

In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Walz urged citizens of his state who want to protest in response to the shooting to do so peacefully in order to avoid creating a pretext for the Trump administration to ramp up its campaign in Minneapolis even further.

“To Minnesotans, don’t take the bait,” he said. “Do not allow them to deploy federal troops here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law.”

On social media, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin characterized Wednesday’s protesters as “violent rioters” and accused the woman who was shot of trying to kill ICE officers in “an act of domestic terrorism.”

“ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism,” McLaughlin alleged. “An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots."

Bob Jacobson, head of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, described the investigation into the incident an "in its infancy" and warned against making any definitive judgements based on "speculation" about what happened.

In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent shot Chicago resident Marimar Martinez multiple times during an immigration enforcement operation in the city's Brighton Park neighborhood. Initially, DHS claimed that Martinez "rammed" the agent's car and pulled a gun. In November, federal prosecutors dropped the charges following court revelations that contradicted the initial DHS narrative.

Last month, the Trump administration directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to send roughly 100 officers, agents and other federal officials to Minneapolis-St. Paul to find and arrest Somalis with final deportation orders.

The move followed a “xenophobic tirade” by President Trump about Somali immigrants in which he called them “garbage.” Minnesota is home to the largest diaspora of Somalis in the world; some Somali residents have been accused of participating in a child-care fraud scheme.

“When they come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country,” Trump said.

Mayor Frey, a Democrat, warned that “targeting Somali people… means that American citizens will be detained for no reason other than the fact that they look Somali.” About 73% of Somali immigrants nationwide are naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Census Bureau. Many others have had temporary legal status for decades under a program for migrants from countries in crisis.

Walz, who ended his re-election bid earlier this week, has been critical of the ongoing federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

“We have a ridiculous surge of apparently 2,000 people not coordinating with us that are for a show of the cameras,” Walz said recently. “Why 2,000 folks? What are they coming to do? Do they want to coordinate with us?”

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