Donald Trump wasted no time shaping a story that doesn’t match what people on the ground say — or what video appears to show — after a woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
In a Truth Social post that immediately sparked outrage, the president claimed the woman was at fault, painting her as violent and dangerous while casting the ICE agent as a hero barely clinging to life.
“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,” Trump wrote. “Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.”
He closed with a familiar rallying cry: “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!”
But that version of events falls apart the moment you listen to eyewitnesses — or watch the footage.
Emily Heller, a Minneapolis resident, says what Trump described simply didn’t happen. Heller stepped outside her home around 9:30 a.m. after neighbors began whistling and honking to warn others that ICE agents were in the area. On her one-way street, she saw a woman in a car blocking a convoy of six or seven ICE vehicles.
“The ICE agents got out of their vehicles and were screaming at her to ‘move, move, move,’” Heller said. “She wasn’t moving at first, and then they came over to her side of the car and tried to open the door, I assume to drag her out.”
According to Heller, the woman wasn’t aggressive. She was terrified.
“She was obviously scared — she was going to leave,” Heller said. “She reversed a little bit and then started to move forward. And as she was starting to move forward, one of the ICE agents stood in front of her car, leaned across her hood and then fired three or four shots right into, it seemed like, her face.”
Multiple eyewitness videos back up Heller’s account. One clip clearly shows armed agents crowding the driver’s side door, trying to open it. The car begins to move — and then shots are fired.
That’s a far cry from the official story pushed by the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled the incident an “act of domestic terrorism,” claiming the woman “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.” Noem said the agent “acted quickly and defensively” to protect himself and others.
Heller isn’t buying it.
“No way,” she said. The agent who fired the shots “put himself in front of her.”
Here’s the best angle of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. Absolutely unnecessary. The victim is reported to be a legal observer and U.S. citizen. pic.twitter.com/mbq1bYwW9U
— Houtan Yaghmai, Esq. (@houtan_esq) January 7, 2026
This isn’t an isolated credibility problem for the Trump administration. During Trump’s second term, federal agents have repeatedly been accused of lying about what happened during immigration enforcement actions. In Chicago, prosecutors dropped charges against a driver who federal agents claimed had “rammed” them. A judge later raised concerns about possible destruction of evidence by an agent involved in that case.
Back in Minneapolis, the aftermath was just as disturbing as the shooting itself. After being shot, the woman’s car accelerated, crashing into a telephone pole and several parked cars. Heller said it took roughly 15 minutes for emergency responders to arrive.
“She was just in her car, slumped. There was no life-saving measures. There was nothing.”
In video Heller shared, a bystander asks to check the woman’s pulse.
“No! Back up! Now!” an unidentified voice snaps back.
“I’m a physician,” the man responds.
“I don’t care,” the voice says.
A masked, armed agent tells the crowd their own medics are coming and asks everyone to “just relax.”
Heller’s response cuts through the chaos.
“How can I relax? You just killed my fucking neighbor,” she can be heard saying. “How do you show up to work every day? How the fuck do you do this every day. You’re killing my neighbors; you’re stealing my neighbors.”
When emergency responders finally reached the victim, it was too late. Even then, the handling of her body left witnesses shaken.
“They didn’t even have a stretcher. They just carried her out by her limbs. It’s like watching a sack of potatoes being carried down the block.”
Heller didn’t mince words about what she believes happened in her neighborhood.
The ICE agents are “untrained, they are unprofessional, and they’re now murderers,” she said. “It feels like my neighborhood is being terrorized.”
Trump’s response didn’t acknowledge any of that. Instead, he rushed to defend federal agents, dismissed eyewitness accounts, and leaned into a narrative that blames a dead woman for her own killing — even as video and testimony tell a very different story.
