An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday after a group of people began blocking agents during an immigration-related operation, the Department of Homeland Security said.
ICE agents, as reporte by NBCUniversal Media, were conducting targeted operations in the city when a woman, 37, allegedly “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed back on DHS’s narrative in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense,” Frey said, referring to ICE. “Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is b—s—.”
Video posted to social media shows several agents approaching a burgundy SUV in the middle of the street and ordering the driver to get out. When one agent grabs the driver’s side door handle, the car reverses and then drives forward.
An agent standing near the front of the vehicle appears to draw his firearm and fire three shots at it, the video shows. The vehicle then crashes into a parked car and hits a light pole.
Frey said after the shooting the first priority of local law enforcement was to get the victim to the hospital, and the second was to get ICE off the scene because they were “making a difficult situation more problematic.”
“What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust. They are ripping families apart, sowing chaos in the streets and, in this case, quite literally killing people,” he said. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
Frey had a message for federal immigration agents in the city.
“To ICE, get the f— out of Minneapolis,” the mayor said. “We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some sort of safety and you are doing the opposite.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a press conference that the agents’ vehicles got stuck in the snow and they were trying to push them out when the woman “attacked them.”
“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” she said.
The agent fired what McLaughlin said were “defensive shots” and killed the woman.
“He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” she said.
Frey said it did not appear from video of the incident that the vehicle was being weaponized against the agent.
“This woman was in her car and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement, which is obviously something that has been happening not just in Minneapolis but around the country,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at the mayor’s news conference.
Brandon Hewitt, who is new to the neighborhood, said he was getting up around 8:30 a.m. when he heard three gunshots. He then looked outside and said he saw that a vehicle had crashed.
“I’m pretty right-leaning, but seeing this, this is not what you need to do,” he told NBC affiliate KARE 11 of Minneapolis. “It’s not how to do it. It’s not how we’re supposed to do things around here in America.”
Aidan Perzana, 31, said he witnessed the incident and it didn’t look like the woman was trying to run over an agent.
“I heard that Noem is trying to say they were trying to run down an officer. There was plenty of space between the officers at that point for the vehicle to make it through,” he told NBC News, adding that it looked like the driver was trying to flee.
Residents and locals gathered in the street after the shooting, chanting and throwing snowballs in the direction of federal agents, KARE reported. Law enforcement deployed pepper spray and tear gas.
McLaughlin said the ICE officers injured during the incident are expected to make a full recovery. She did not detail what type of injuries the agents sustained.
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