Protests Erupt as ICE Agent Kills Woman During Minneapolis Immigration Raid

US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said she was ‘beyond outraged’ by ICE’s ‘reckless, callous actions’.

Law enforcement officers investigate the deadly shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday [Stephen Maturen/Getty Images]

By News Agencies

7 Jan 2026

A federal officer with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has fatally shot a woman who was acting as a legal observer amid ongoing protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, local officials have said.

US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said in a post on X that she was “beyond outraged” by ICE’ “reckless, callous actions”, saying they “led to the killing of a legal observer in Minneapolis”.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the woman who was killed was 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

“She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the newspaper.

Following the shooting, protesters quickly gathered at the scene, shouting, “Shame! Shame! Shame,” and “ICE out of Minnesota!”

Some were met by heavily armed federal agents wearing gas masks who fired chemical munitions at the demonstrators.

Snap protests were also organised in other cities and towns across the United States on Wednesday evening as the Trump-administration claimed that the agent who allegedly shot Good was acting in “self-defence”.

“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 bulls***,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a fiery news conference.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also decried the shooting as “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable”. He urged anyone participating in protests to remain peaceful, adding he had put the state’s National Guard on alert.

“I feel your anger,” he told Minnesotans at a separate news conference.

The shooting took place in a neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area.

Notably, the area was just 1.6km (one mile) from where George Floyd was murdered by policeman Derek Chauvin in May 2020, sparking mass Black Lives Matter protests during Trump’s first presidency.

‘Defensive Shots’

Authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), are investigating the shooting, which took place after agents on foot surrounded a car on a snow-lined street, according to video shared online of the incident.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Good was targeting agents when she was killed, alleging she had “weaponised” ⁠her vehicle.

“An ICE officer, fearing for ​his ‌life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and ‌the safety of ‌the public, ⁠fired defensive shots,” McLaughlin wrote in a post ‌on the social media platform X, calling the incident an “act of domestic terrorism”.

After the gunfire, Good’s SUV could be seen with a bullet hole through its windshield and blood splattered ‌across the headrest.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed, without evidence, that the woman killed was a “professional agitator”. He broadly blamed the situation on the “radical left”, an amorphous label he regularly applies to critics of his policies.

But a witness at the scene said that Good had been trying to leave when she was shot.

Emily Heller, who said the incident unfolded near her home, told Minnesota Public Radio that she heard ICE agents tell the driver, “Get out of here.”

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in – like, his midriff was on her bumper – and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller said.

Venus de Mars, 65, who also lives nearby, described watching paramedics perform CPR on a woman collapsed next to a snowbank near the crashed car. Shortly ‌after, they loaded her into an ambulance and drove away without their sirens on.

“There’s been lots of ICE activity, but nothing like this,” de Mars said. “I’m so angry. I’m so angry, and I feel helpless.”

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused the Trump administration of spreading false information.

“You’re lying. There was no attempt to run the officer over and no ICE agents appear to be hurt,” she wrote on X. “Get out of our city,” she added.

Deadly immigration crackdown

The midwestern cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, known as the Twin Cities, are the latest to be targeted in immigration raids under the second Trump administration, which have seen thousands of people detained and violent confrontations between immigration agents and protesters.

The city is home to thousands of Somali Americans, who have become the recent target of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric, including over allegations that some members of the community misused federal subsidies for low-income childcare.

At a December cabinet meeting, Trump called Somali residents “garbage” and said, “ I don’t want them in our country” as his administration withdrew millions of dollars in funding for the childcare in the city.

The Trump administration has significantly ramped up mass deportation efforts, including by allocating $75bn for ICE’s personnel, enforcement and detention budget over the next four years.

The funding makes ICE the most resourced law enforcement agency in the country, with its budget far surpassing the military budgets of most countries in the world.

Since Trump’s second term began, the Trace news site has documented at least 28 instances where federal agents opened fire or brandished a gun during an immigration enforcement operation.

At least three other people have been killed prior to Wednesday’s shooting, according to Trace, including two detainees killed by a sniper at an ICE field office in Dallas, Texas and a 38-year-old Mexican national, who was allegedly shot and killed by an ICE officer in Chicago, Illinois, in September.