Welcome to The Logoff: A woman was fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, just days after the Trump administration deployed thousands of new immigration agents to the city.
What happened? Renee Nicole Good, 37, was killed Wednesday morning after a federal agent fired multiple shots at close range into the driver’s side of her vehicle. Video of the shooting shared with local reporters shows Good attempting to drive away as shots are fired.
What’s the context? This kind of violence has seemed all but inevitable since federal immigration officials began military-style deployments to US cities last year, resulting in a tide of videos capturing excessive use of force against Americans by immigration agents.
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser reports, it also comes as the Supreme Court has repeatedly acted to place ICE and other immigration agents above the law and legal accountability.
How is the Trump administration responding? In confirming the shooting, DHS officials, including Secretary Kristi Noem, have described it as “an act of domestic terrorism” and an attack on ICE officers. It’s important to emphasize that Noem’s characterization of the shooting is not supported by video of the incident.
However, it is consistent with a narrative that the administration has attempted to drive in public statements and court filings, one that portrays federal immigration officers as constantly under threat. In at least one instance, that narrative has been explicitly debunked by a federal court.
Why is ICE in Minneapolis? The DHS presence in Minneapolis, which administration officials have described as the “largest immigration operation ever,” comes after weeks of Republican outrage focused on Minnesota and Minneapolis immigrant communities.
Most recently, right-wing media has seized on a welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota as an opportunity for viral content; most of the alleged perpetrators charged in the scandal are Somali Americans, and Donald Trump and others have used the story to attack Minneapolis’s Somali community writ large.
