A fatal encounter between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis has ignited a firestorm as federal immigration operations under President Donald Trump continue into the new year.
The woman, identified as Renee Nicole Good, was shot and killed inside her vehicle on the morning of January 7, during a large-scale immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
Federal officials maintain the officer acted in self-defense after the woman attempted to harm law enforcement personnel.
However, city and state leaders, along with video evidence circulated online, dispute that account, describing the shooting as reckless, unnecessary, and avoidable.
The incident has triggered protests, prompted school closures, and fired up tensions between the Trump administration and Democratic-led cities.
Why were their immigration officers in Minnesota?
The shooting occurred amid what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as the “largest DHS operation ever” in Minnesota.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, approximately 2,000 officers were deployed across the state, particularly in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as part of a sweeping immigration crackdown.
The operation was tied, in part, to long-running allegations of welfare fraud involving certain nonprofit organisations within Minnesota’s Somali community. The fraud allegations date back to 2020 and relate to organisations that administered childcare and other social services programs.
Federal prosecutors began bringing charges in 2022, during the presidency of Joe Biden, and at least 56 individuals have since pleaded guilty.
Noem said the current enforcement push targeted individuals she described as “fraudsters, murderers, rapists, and gang members.”
She also stated that authorities had already arrested “hundreds and hundreds” of people, while in another briefing she said roughly 1,500 arrests had been made in recent weeks.
Trump has repeatedly criticised the Somali community in connection with the fraud scandal, at one point referring to them as “garbage.”
The announcement of the DHS operation had already put the Twin Cities on edge. For nearly a year, migrant rights groups, neighbourhood activists, and community organisers had been preparing for an immigration enforcement surge.
They established online alert networks, monitored license plates for suspected federal vehicles, and distributed whistles and noisemaking devices to warn residents when ICE agents were in the area.
Preparations extended to places of worship, mobile home parks, and immigrant neighbourhoods. Against this tense backdrop, the fatal shooting unfolded in a residential part of south Minneapolis.
What happened on the morning of January 7?
The shooting took place shortly after 9:30 am (local time) in a snowy neighbourhood just south of downtown Minneapolis.
The area is located a few blocks from some of the city’s oldest immigrant markets and approximately one mile from the intersection where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.
According to Noem, ICE officers were responding to a vehicle that had become stuck in the snow when they encountered what she described as a “mob of agitators.”
Noem said one protester — later identified as Renee Nicole Good — followed ICE agents throughout the day, blocked their vehicle, and refused to comply with orders to move.
“She then proceeded to weaponise her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over,” Noem told a news conference, adding that the woman’s car struck the officer.
In a separate statement, Noem described the shooting 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.”
Noem also said the officer who fired his weapon was a veteran law enforcement official who “followed his training.” She noted that the same officer had previously been rammed and dragged by an anti-ICE motorist in June last year.
According to Noem, the officer was treated by a doctor at a hospital after the Minneapolis incident and was later released.
Trump
echoed the federal government’s account in a social media post, writing that the video showed the woman “violently, wilfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defence.”
STAND WITH ICE pic.twitter.com/TWuqji0zXh
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 7, 2026
However, local officials and eyewitness footage challenged that version of events almost immediately.
What do the videos show?
Multiple videos recorded by bystanders and posted to social media captured the moments leading up to the shooting from different angles.
One widely shared video shows a maroon Honda SUV partially blocking the road in a snow-covered residential street. As the clip begins, the driver slowly moves forward and then stops to allow another car to pass.
The driver, with the window down, appears to gesture to an approaching pickup truck to continue driving.
Instead of passing, the pickup truck stops. Two officers exit the vehicle and walk toward the SUV. One officer orders the driver to get out and reaches for the door handle.
At that moment, the SUV reverses slightly. A third agent moves from the passenger side to the front of the vehicle. The driver then moves forward while steering to the right, appearing to attempt to drive away from the officers.
As the SUV advances, the officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls out his firearm, steps back, and fires.
In one video, he fires three shots. At least one of those shots appears to occur after the SUV’s front bumper has already passed him.
The footage does not clearly show whether the car made contact with the officer. Throughout the encounter, the officer remains standing.
After the shots were fired, the SUV accelerates down the street, crashing into two parked vehicles and a utility pole before coming to a stop.
In another video taken after the shooting, a woman who identified herself as Good’s spouse is seen crying near the damaged vehicle. She told bystanders that the couple had recently arrived in Minnesota and that they had a child together.
The videos do not show any earlier interactions between Good and ICE officers prior to the confrontation.
What did Minneapolis authorities say?
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey strongly criticised the Trump administration’s version of events after reviewing the video footage. “They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” Frey said during a press conference.
“Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.”
Frey accused federal immigration agents of fuelling disorder in the city and called on ICE to leave Minneapolis altogether.
“What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” he said.
He also condemned the broader impact of the immigration crackdown, adding,
“They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”
Frey urged residents to remain calm despite the anger surrounding the incident.
The Minneapolis Police Chief, Brian O’Hara, briefly addressed the shooting but, unlike federal officials, did not suggest that the driver had attempted to harm anyone.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also rejected the federal narrative and placed responsibility for the death on the Trump administration’s policies.
“What we are seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict,” Walz said. “…Today that recklessness cost someone their life.”
Walz said he had put the National Guard on alert in case the situation escalated further, but he also called on demonstrators to keep protests peaceful.
“They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” the governor said.
Who was Renee Nicole Good?
The Minnesota City Council identified the woman who was killed as Renee Nicole Good, also known as Renee Nicole Macklin Good. She was 37 years old, married, and had a 6-year-old child.
Good described herself on social media as a “poet and writer and wife and mom” and said she was originally from Colorado. According to her spouse, the couple had only recently moved to Minnesota.
Good was not the target of any immigration enforcement action, according to the police chief.
Her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter was known for her compassion and caring nature.
“She’s taken care of people all her life,” Ganger said. “She was loving, forgiving and affectionate.”
The Minnesota City Council issued a statement saying Good had been “out caring for her neighbors this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government.” The council demanded that ICE leave Minneapolis immediately.
A neighbour, Venus de Mars, a 65-year-old resident who lives near the shooting site, described what she witnessed after the incident.
She said she saw paramedics performing CPR on a woman who had collapsed near a snowbank next to the crashed car.
“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.”
Another local resident, Lynette Reini-Grandell, who filmed the shooting, said, “She was driving away and they killed her.”
What was the reaction in the neighbourhood after the incident?
The shooting quickly drew large crowds to the residential neighbourhood where it occurred. By the afternoon, protesters had gathered to confront both local and federal officers.
As night fell, aerial television footage showed what appeared to be thousands of people assembled at the site. Candles were placed along the street, illuminating the winter darkness during a vigil for Good.
Earlier in the day, some protesters encountered heavily armed federal agents wearing gas masks. Officers fired chemical irritants as tensions escalated.
Chants of “ICE out of Minnesota” echoed through the area, accompanied by whistles that had become a common feature of immigration enforcement protests in other cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago.
Among the federal officials present at the scene was Gregory Bovino, a senior US Customs and Border Patrol official who had previously been involved in immigration crackdowns in multiple major American cities.
The protests reflected long-standing frustration among Minneapolis residents and migrant advocacy groups, who viewed the federal operation as an unnecessary provocation in a Democratic-led city.
Opponents of Trump called for protests in several other American cities, raising concerns that the Minneapolis shooting could become a national flashpoint over the administration’s immigration strategy.
In response to the unrest and safety concerns following the shooting, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that all schools, sports, and extracurricular activities would be canceled for Thursday and Friday.
In a statement, the district said the decision was made “due to safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city.”
Walz reiterated that while he was outraged by the shooting, he wanted to prevent further violence or escalation.
What next?
Both federal and state authorities confirmed that investigations into the shooting were ongoing. Noem said the FBI would investigate the incident, while Minnesota officials said they would conduct their own inquiry.
Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson urged the public to avoid jumping to conclusions.
“Keep in mind that this is an investigation that is also in its infancy. So any speculation about what has happened would be just that,” Jacobson told reporters.
There were also calls on social media to prosecute the officer who fired the fatal shots.
US Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose congressional district includes the area where the shooting occurred, condemned the killing, calling it “state violence,” not law enforcement.
Walz, who had run for US vice president in the 2024 election won by Trump, said the tragedy was the result of a governing approach focused on fear and confrontation rather than public safety.
Walz also announced earlier in the week that he would not seek a third term as governor, citing the difficulty of simultaneously addressing the welfare fraud scandal and running a campaign.
Local officials said the Minneapolis shooting marked at least the fifth death linked to immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration.
In recent months, similar operations had taken place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other urban centres, often accompanied by protests, and accusations of excessive force.
Frey’s blunt message to federal agents — “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis” — captured the depth of anger among local leaders.
With inputs from agencies
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