Protests after ICE officer shoots woman dead during immigration crackdown in Minneapolis

A bullet hole is seen in the windscreen of a crashed car as law enforcement officers work at the scene of the shooting. Picture: Tom Baker/AP Photo

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed a female motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city.

Federal officials claimed the shooting was an act of self-defence, but the mayor of Minneapolis described it as “reckless” and unnecessary.

The shooting happened in a residential neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit to 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”.

People protest as law enforcement officers attend at the scene of the shooting in Minneapolis (Tom Baker/AP)

But Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey blasted that characterisation and the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers as part of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul.

“They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Mr Frey said, calling on the federal agents to leave the city.

“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-defence. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” the mayor said.

The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major American cities under the Trump administration. The woman is at least the fifth person killed in a handful of states since 2024.

The Twin Cities have been on edge since DHS announced on Tuesday that it had launched the operation, with more than 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

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 US 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 and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.

During her Texas visit, Ms Noem confirmed that DHS had deployed more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities and already made “hundreds and hundreds” of arrests.