An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday in a scene that was all captured on video during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city.
Federal officials have the shooting said was an act of self-defense, but that the mayor described it as reckless and unnecessary.
The 37-year-old woman was shot in front of a family member during a traffic stop in a snowy residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets and about a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020. Her killing quickly drew a crowd of hundreds of angry protesters.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, while visiting Texas, described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.”
“An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him,” she said.
But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted that characterization as “garbage” and criticized the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of the immigration crackdown.
“What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said, calling on the immigration agents to leave. “They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” the mayor said.
Frey said he had a message for ICE: “Get the f— out of Minneapolis.”
The death of the Minneapolis driver, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns.
What does video show?
Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points 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 handle. The Honda Pilot 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 vehicle at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward 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’d seen.
“She was driving away and they killed her,” said resident Lynette Reini-Grandell, who was outdoors recording video on her phone.
After the shooting, emergency medical technicians tried to administer aid to the woman. One video showed agents stopping a man who said he was a physician and had asked to check for a pulse.
Chief Brian O’Hara briefly described the shooting to reporters.
“This woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway on Portland Avenue. … At some point a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot and the vehicle began to drive off,” the chief said. “At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
Shooting under investigation
The shooting marked a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major cities under the Trump administration.
There were calls on social media to prosecute the officer who shot the driver.
Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said state authorities would investigate the shooting with federal authorities.
“Keep in mind that this is an investigation that is also in its infancy. So any speculation about what has happened would be just that,” Jacobson told reporters.
The shooting happened in the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who called it “state violence,” not law enforcement.
U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin called for a “full investigation,” saying “video of the incident starkly contradicts DHS’s narrative, and the fact that DHS has jumped to characterize this shooting in ‘self-defense’ is rushed, at best, and a lie, at worst.”
Meanwhile, Noem said the driver did hit the agent, who was later hospitalized, treated and released.
“Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation,” she said at a news conference in Minneapolis Wednesday evening.
Noem alleged that the woman who was killed was trying to block officers with her vehicle, had been harassing them through the day and “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over” before she was shot.
“We’ll let the FBI continue the investigation to get it resolved,” she said.
What federal policy says about shooting at vehicles
The Department of Justice says in its Justice Manual that firearms should not be used simply to disable a moving vehicle.
The policy allows deadly force only in limited circumstances, such as when someone in the vehicle is threatening another person with deadly force, or when the vehicle itself is being used in a way that poses an imminent risk and no reasonable alternative exists, including moving out of the vehicle’s path.
Police training experts have told The Associated Press that officers are generally taught not to step in front of moving vehicles to try to block them.
Training also emphasizes weighing the totality of the situation, including whether the person involved poses an immediate danger and whether the underlying allegation involves violence.
Many department policies specifically bar firing at vehicles just to stop a fleeing suspect.
Some policing experts say the rules need flexibility, pointing to cases in which people have used vehicles as weapons, including attacks in recent years where cars were driven into crowds.
The debate has been sharpened by high-profile cases, including a 2023 shooting in Ohio in which an officer fired through a windshield in a grocery store parking lot while investigating a shoplifting allegation, killing the pregnant motorist. The officer was later charged and acquitted.
Former Chicago federal prosecutor Ron Safer said the tone of the violent Minneapolis encounter was set well before the actual gunshots.
“If I were conducting an investigation as a federal prosecutor, and one of my agents approached the car and said, get out of the f-ing car, that agent would be off my investigation,” Safer said. “That’s not the way federal agents comport themselves. So that’s the start. Don’t escalate, de-escalate.”
Safer said the situation only heightened from there.
“Then if you come up to the car don’t put your hands on the car, tell the person to please step out of the car. If that order is not obeyed, then you escalate, but they didn’t give that a chance to happen. They escalated from the first second and continued to escalate through the use of deadly force,” he said.
For decades, police departments across the U.S. have limited when officers are allowed to fire at moving vehicles, citing the danger to bystanders and the risk that a driver who is shot will lose control.
The New York Police Department was among the first major agencies to adopt those limits. The department barred officers from firing at or from moving vehicles after a 1972 shooting killed a 10-year-old passenger in a stolen car and sparked protests.
Researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s later found that the policy, along with other use-of-force restrictions, helped reduce bystanders being struck by police gunfire and led to fewer deaths in police shootings.
Over the years, many law enforcement agencies followed New York’s lead. Policing organizations such as the Police Executive Research Forum and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have recommended similar limits, warning that shooting at vehicles creates serious risks from stray gunfire or from a vehicle crashing if the driver is hit.
Chicago experienced a similar incident during immigration crackdown
In October, a Chicago woman was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in a similar incident involving a vehicle, though she survived.
Almost immediately, Homeland Security officials issued a statement labeling Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old teaching assistant at a Montessori school, as a “domestic terrorist” who had “ambushed” and “rammed” agents with her vehicle.
She was charged in federal court with assaulting a federal officer, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But federal prosecutors were later forced to dismiss the case against Martinez before trial after security camera video and bodycam footage emerged that her defense lawyers said undermined the official narrative.
The videos showed a Border Patrol agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck, rather than the other way around, her attorney said.
Governor calls for calm
A large throng of protesters gathered at the scene after the shooting, where they vented their anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior U.S. 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, chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota,” and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he’s prepared to deploy the National Guard if necessary. He said a family member of the driver was there to witness the killing, which he described as “predictable” and “avoidable.” He also said like many, he was outraged by the shooting, but he called on people to keep protests peaceful.
“They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” the governor said during a news conference. “If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully, as you always do. We can’t give them what they want.”
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