Without waiting for the results of the investigation, Donald Trump and his administration rushed to defend the agent who killed a motorist during an immigration police (ICE) operation in Minneapolis.
It’s a new video that is scandalizing America. The immigration police (ICE) are making headlines in the American media after the death of a mother in Minneapolis, shot dead by one of their agents.
The drama arouses fear in this city already marked by the death of George Floyd in 2020, killed by a police officer. It shines the spotlight on the brutal methods of this federal force pampered by the Trump administration.
Immigration police were conducting a large operation in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, when an agent used his service weapon on a motorist.
In a video filmed by a witness, ICE officers are seen approaching a Honda SUV and asking the woman behind the wheel to get out. While the driver continued to maneuver, an officer placed in front of the car fired three times at the victim, who was fatally injured. The vehicle then continues to move forward and ends its journey by crashing into another car a few meters further on.
“An act of domestic terrorism”
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The scene shocks the United States. The victim, a 37-year-old American mother, did not appear to present an immediate danger to the police officers. But if the FBI is barely beginning its investigation, the Trump administration immediately rushed to the aid of the agent involved in the shooting.
“Rioters began blocking officers,” the Department of Homeland Security reported in a statement. According to his version, one of the protesters “transformed her vehicle into a weapon, attempting to overthrow our law enforcement officers with the intention of killing them – an act of domestic terrorism”. “An ICE agent, fearing for his life, the lives of his colleagues, and the safety of the public, fired shots in self-defense,” the department added.
Donald Trump, who said he “watched the video”, also rushed to his social network Truth to defend the police officer’s action. The US president says the driver “violently, deliberately and savagely drove towards the ICE agent, who appears to have shot her in self-defense.”
“This situation is being investigated in its entirety. But the reason these incidents are happening is because the radical left threatens, attacks and targets law enforcement and immigration officers on a daily basis,” he charged.
The victim, Renee Nicole Good, “behaved horribly,” insisted Donald Trump during an exchange with journalists from the New York Times, “And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over,” he said – although the images available to the public do not show the vehicle hitting the police officer who fired.
An impartial investigation?
Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey called the immigration police’s version “bullshit,” saying the driver never posed a danger to anyone.
“I saw the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine”, also judged the Democratic governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, former running mate of Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, saying he was ensuring “that a complete, fair and rapid investigation is carried out”.
But the local authorities, led by Democrats, were excluded from the investigation into the circumstances of the death, carried out exclusively by the federal authorities, and in particular the FBI. On Friday, the mayor of Minneapolis expressed concern about a lack of impartiality in the federal investigation. “The fact that Pam Bondi’s Justice Department and this government have already reached a conclusion on this matter is very worrying,” Jacob Frey said at a press conference.
For Democrats, the death of Renee Nicole Good is the culmination of a long series of blunders committed by the immigration police. “We have been dreading this moment from the beginning,” said Jacob Frey, urging ICE to “get the hell out” of his city.
Make numbers
Created in 2003 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE) has become since last year the armed wing of the policy of mass expulsions desired by Donald Trump.
The objective set by the American president: to expel one million undocumented immigrants each year. To try to reach this figure, the ICE is casting a wide net. If the Trump administration claims to rid America of “the worst of the worst foreign criminals”, the statistics show a completely different reality. According to The Guardian, ICE detained some 68,000 people in its centers in mid-December, three-quarters of whom had no criminal past. As for those with a criminal record, it is sometimes only a simple traffic offense.
“The government is more interested in the quantity of arrests than in the quality of people arrested,” denounced John Sandweg, former director of ICE between 2013 and 2014, to Politico.
Heavily armed and often masked, ICE agents carry out spectacular and often violent raids in public spaces. Enough to create a climate of terror among the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants present on American territory.
Stories of uneventful immigrants caught in ICE’s net are spread across the American press: a worker pulled out of his car at a red light, a father arrested in front of his children, an elderly woman arrested while gardening…
“It’s easier to arrest the immigrant who lives like an average American citizen and pays his taxes than to track down a criminal,” observed researcher Romuald Sciora to BFMTV last October.
ICE also arrested at least 170 American citizens, according to figures from investigative media Propublica. Last September, the violent attack on a 79-year-old car wash manager, pinned to the ground by ICE agents who came to check his employees, caused a scandal near Los Angeles.
Increased resources
The agency has seen its resources explode since the Republican billionaire’s return to power. The major budget law passed this summer (“One Big Beautiful Bill”) tripled its budget, devoting a record total of $170 billion to the fight against illegal immigration and securing borders.
At the start of the school year in September, ICE launched a vast campaign to recruit 10,000 “deportation agents” who will be added to the 20,000 already mobilized in the country. Massive recruitment which also raises the question of the profile of the people recruited and the quality of their training.
“To obtain a large number of agents quickly, we select them quickly and we train them just as quickly. There are federal standards for recruiting agents in normal times. For ICE, the procedure is simplified,” Olivier Richomme, professor of American civilization at the University of Lyon 2-Lumière, explains to BFM.
This is not the only privilege granted by Donald Trump to the immigration police. Its areas of intervention have also been extended. As early as January, the Ministry of Homeland Security canceled a directive which protected so-called “sensitive” places. From now on, ICE can intervene near hospitals, schools or even churches.
The federal agency is finally benefiting from the help of the Supreme Court. The body dominated by conservative judges lifted in September the bans on checks based on certain criteria, such as origin or spoken language, which had been imposed by a federal judge in July.
