The killing of the Minneapolis driver was at least the fifth involving federal immigration agents during Trump’s immigration crackdown
After an ICE agent deployed to the Minneapolis area on Wednesday shot a 37-year-old woman in the head, killing her, his fellow agents declined repeated requests from someone on scene who identified themselves as a physician to check her for a pulse, new video shows.
The woman was shot in front of a family member during a traffic stop in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis as she slowly maneuvered her vehicle through immigration agents. Trump administration officials quickly dubbed her actions “violent,” “vicious” and an “act of domestic terrorism,” and claimed despite abundant video evidence to the contrary that the agent had acted in self-defense.
“Can I go check a pulse?” an individual can be heard asking in a video clip taken shortly after the fatal shooting, which was published by Huffpost. “No, back up, now,” an immigration agent responded, before saying, “I don’t care.” The group of masked immigration agents at the scene can be seen wearing full tactical gear and holding automatic weapons.
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“We have medics on scene, we have our own medics,” the agent said as the woman who his associate shot in the head moments before remained in her vehicle, whose body weight had presumably accelerated the car into a pole.
“Where are they? Where are they?” a bystander can be heard screaming at the agent, who tells her to relax. “How can I relax, you just killed my f—ing neighbor. You [unintelligible] her in the f—ing face. You killed my f—ing neighbor.
“How do you show up to work every day? How the f— do you do this every day? You’re killing my neighbors, you’re stealing my neighbors. What the f—, man?” she said.
Homeland Security Secretary 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,” The Associated Press reported.
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Videos of the incident did not offer clarity on whether the woman’s vehicle made contact with an officer, who sidestepped in front of it from his original position on the side of the car, but he did not fall over, nor was he run over as Trump administration officials have claimed.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted the characterization by Noem and President Donald Trump as “garbage” and criticized the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of the immigration crackdown.
“What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said, telling ICE to “get the f— out of Minneapolis.”
“They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people,” he said. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bulls—.”
Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and 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, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.
The shooting marked a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major cities under the Trump administration. The death of the Minneapolis driver, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns.
Last September, ICE shot and killed another person outside Chicago. Two people have died after being struck by vehicles while fleeing immigration authorities. And a California farmworker fell from a greenhouse and broke his neck during an ICE raid last July, AP reported.
Though such federal agents do not have universal immunity, no officers or agents have been charged in the deaths.
