Her death quickly sparked protests, with hundreds gathering at the scene, as ITV News US Correspondent Dan Rivers reports
Warning- this reports contains images some people may find distressing
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer has shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot at a traffic stop in a residential area south of the city’s downtown area on Wednesday, in front of a family member. Local police said she was shot in the head.
She was a US citizen born in Colorado and appears to have never been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.
State and local officials demanded ICE leave the state after the shooting. But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said agents are not going anywhere.
The Department of Homeland Security has deployed more than 2,000 officers to the area in what it says is its largest immigration enforcement operation ever. Noem said more than 1,500 people have been arrested.
Hundreds of people came out for a vigil to mourn Ms Good on Wednesday evening, urging the public to resist immigration enforcement. Some chanted as they marched through the city, but there was no violence.
Videos taken by bystanders and posted to social media show an officer approaching her car, demanding Ms Good open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, 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.
An eyewitness who spoke to ITV News’ US partner CNN said he heard a woman shout: “You guys just killed my wife!”
Local resident Tyrice Jones, 35, was in an upstairs apartment when he heard gunshots and a crash, prompting him to come outside and see the SUV driven by Ms Good had smashed into a streetlight directly in front of his building, he said.
Kristi Noem 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,” Noem said.
Trump doubled down on Noem’s explanation of the events by blaming the “radical left” for “threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis”.
“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch,” he said on Truth Social on Wednesday.
“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 defence.”
But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected that description as “garbage” and criticised the deployment of more than 2,000 federal officers to Minneapolis and St Paul as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In a news conference, Mayor Frey called Noem’s claims “bull****”, telling ICE officers to “get the f*** out” of the city.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” Frey said. “Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bull****.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara gave a brief account of the shooting but, unlike federal officials, did not suggest the driver was trying to harm anyone.
“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.”
Her death quickly sparked protests, with hundreds gathering at the scene. Protesters loudly chanted “Shame on you” and “ICE out of Minnesota!” while following and throwing snowballs at official vehicles.
Ms Good’s ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said she had just dropped off her six-year-old son at school and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis.
They had moved to the city last year from Kansas City, Missouri.
Ms Good had three children, a six-year-old son from her second marriage and a daughter and a son from her first, who are 15 and 12 respectively.
Ms Good’s mother Donna Ganger told the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper that the family was notified of the death late on Wednesday morning local time.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ms Ganger said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
On social media Ms Good had described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was “experiencing Minneapolis”, and displayed a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.
The shooting marks a sharp escalation in a series of immigration enforcement operations carried out in major US cities under the Trump administration.
Ms Good’s death is at least the fifth linked to recent immigration crackdowns.
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