Tensions in Minneapolis rise over ICE fatal shooting of woman

MINNEAPOLIS, USA – Tensions between Minnesota and federal officials deepened on Thursday, January 8, over a US Immigration agent’s fatal shooting of a 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis, an incident that drew condemnation from local officials and sparked widespread protests in the state and beyond.

State and federal officials offered starkly different accounts of the shooting, in which an unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot US citizen Renee Nicole Good in a residential neighborhood.

At the time she was shot, Good was participating in one of numerous “neighborhood patrols” organized by local activists to track, observe, and film ICE activities, according to Michelle Gross, president of the Minnesota-based Community United Against Police Brutality and a paralegal for the National Lawyers Guild.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said on Thursday it had initially agreed with the FBI to conduct a joint investigation into the shooting but that the federal agency had “reversed course” and taken sole control of the probe.

The decision, according to BCA Superintendent Drew Evans, means the state bureau will no longer have access to the scene evidence, case materials, or interviews.

“As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation,” Evans said.

Keith Ellison, the state’s Democratic attorney general, told CNN that the FBI’s decision was “deeply disturbing” and said state authorities could investigate with or without the cooperation of the federal government. He added that the evidence he has seen, including some that has not yet been made public, indicates that state charges are a possibility.

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in New York that the BCA was not “cut out” but did not have jurisdiction.

Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said at a press conference that any federal investigation that proceeded without state involvement would likely be seen as a “whitewash.”

“And I say that only because people in positions of power … from the president to the vice president to Kristi Noem have already passed judgment and told you things that are verifiably false,” he said.

The FBI declined to comment on the BCA statement.

The ICE agent who shot Good was among 2,000 federal officers that President Donald Trump’s administration had announced it was deploying to the Minneapolis area in what the Department of Homeland Security described as the “largest DHS operation ever.”

DHS officials, including Noem, defended the shooting as self-defense and accused the woman of trying to ram agents in an act of “domestic terrorism.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, called that assertion “bullshit” and “garbage” based on bystander videos taken of the incident that appeared to contradict the government’s account.

Both Frey and Walz have called on Trump, a Republican, to withdraw federal agents from the city, saying their presence is sowing chaos in the streets. But the New York Times reported that the administration was deploying more than 100 additional Customs and Border Patrol personnel from other cities in the wake of the shooting.

Vice President JD Vance doubled down on the government’s narrative at a White House press briefing on Thursday, repeatedly calling Good’s actions an “attack” on law enforcement and saying the agent deserved “a debt of gratitude.” He also dismissed the notion that a federal officer could face prosecution by state authorities.

Bystander videos of shooting

The videos showed two masked officers approaching Good’s car, which was stopped at a perpendicular angle on a Minneapolis street. As one officer ordered Good out of the car and grabbed at her door handle, the car briefly reversed and then began driving forward, turning to the right in an apparent attempt to leave the scene.

A third officer, who had been filming the scene before walking to the front of her car, drew his gun and fired three times while jumping back, with the last shots aimed through the driver’s window after the car’s bumper appeared to have passed by his body.

It was unclear from the video whether the car came into contact with the officer, who stayed on his feet and could be seen walking after the incident. Noem said he was taken to a hospital and released the same day, while Trump said on social media that the woman “ran over the ICE Officer.”

Gross, the local activist, told Reuters she knew first-hand of Good’s involvement as one of hundreds of community members taking part in neighborhood “observer” patrols, and “had been doing that” when she was killed.

According to Gross, federal officers had ordered Good to clear away, and she was trying to turn her car around when agents approached her vehicle, with one opening fire as she was “trying to leave” and the automobile pulled away.

Gross disputed assertions by Noem that Good “had been stalking and impeding” agents’ work all day.

“There was absolutely no justification for deadly force,” Gross said. “People are just exercising their First Amendment right to videotape police.”

DHS did not immediately respond to questions about the identity of the agent involved in Wednesday’s shooting.

But Vance said the same agent had been dragged by a car last year and suffered injuries that required 33 stitches. That description matched a case from June 2025, when a migrant living in the country illegally tried to drive away while ICE agents were attempting to arrest him in Bloomington, Minnesota, dragging one officer about 100 yards (91.4 meters).

The officer, identified in court records as Jonathan Ross, suffered wounds to his arm and hand that took a total of 33 stitches to close, according to prosecutors. The driver was convicted last month of assaulting a federal officer.

The shooting left the city on edge, with thousands taking to the streets in protest. On Thursday morning, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at a federal building where an immigration court is housed, chanting “shame” and “murder” at armed and masked federal officers, some of whom used tear gas and pepper balls on protesters.

Protests were also ongoing or planned in other cities, including New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Walz has put the state’s National Guard on alert, and Minneapolis public schools were closed on Thursday and Friday as a precautionary measure.

With classes canceled, 17-year-old Addie Flewelling attended the Minneapolis protest on Thursday to condemn the shooting and show her opposition to the immigration crackdown, including a raid at her high school earlier this week.

“Students were chased off of their place of education,” she said. “This is not OK. I’m scared to go to school.”

Good, who was originally from Colorado, had a 15-year-old daughter and two sons aged 12 and 6, according to the Washington Post. She earned a degree in English in 2020 from Virginia’s Old Dominion University, where she won an undergraduate poetry prize.

The Minnesota operation, part of Trump’s nationwide crackdown on migrants, was also mounted in response to a politically charged investigation into fraud allegations against some Minnesota nonprofit groups in the Somali community. Trump has attacked Somalis and Somali Americans in Minnesota as “garbage.” – Rappler.com