The streets of Minneapolis are boiling over after federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed a local woman during a massive enforcement operation that President Donald Trump immediately leapt to defend as justified and necessary.
On Wednesday morning, ICE agents on a residential street in south Minneapolis opened fire on a vehicle being driven by 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. The shooting was captured in harrowing video that immediately spread across social platforms and became the raw evidence around which national outrage has crystallized.
Within hours of the shooting, Trump took to Truth Social to shape the narrative, posting that “It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”
His post went even further, framing the incident as symptomatic of what he called a broader threat from his political enemies: “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.”
That framing — rolled out before any investigation has concluded or even a full autopsy report released — has infuriated local leaders and sparked protests that have spread beyond Minneapolis. Schools in parts of the city canceled classes Thursday as vigils and demonstrations continued into the night, with crowds chanting for ICE to leave and lambasting federal agents for what many see as reckless and militarized behavior.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey didn’t mince words in response to the president’s post. After reviewing the footage himself, Frey publicly rejected the White House’s characterization, bluntly telling reporters that the notion the shooting was justified was “bulls***.”
The mayor’s denunciation underscores a growing fault line between federal officials — who insist the agent acted to protect himself from an allegedly weaponized vehicle — and city leaders who see the death of Good, a U.S. citizen and mother, as emblematic of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration tactics gone too far.
As the controversy swirls, the family of the woman shot dead has been thrust into the center of a national conflict over policing, immigration enforcement and presidential spin. Candlelight vigils and protests have called attention to the human cost of what critics describe as an aggressive, highly militarized ICE deployment that has seen federal agents conducting raids in multiple major cities.
Whether Minneapolis will calm down in the coming days or erupt further depends, in part, on how the federal government handles what many see as a political and humanitarian flashpoint. But for now, Trump’s words — and his eagerness to publicly defend an ICE killing before facts are fully known — have only poured fuel on a fire that Minneapolis residents say is far from extinguished.
