A US immigration officer shot and killed an American woman on the streets of Minneapolis on Wednesday, leading to huge protests and outrage from local leaders who rejected White House claims she was a domestic terrorist. The woman, identified in local media as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was hit at point blank range as she apparently tried to drive away from agents who were crowding around her car, which they said was blocking their way. Footage of the incident shows a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fire three times into the Honda SUV, which then hurtles out of control and smashes into stationary vehicles, as horrified onlookers hurl abuse at the federal officers.

Her bloodied body is then seen slumped in the crashed vehicle. US President Donald Trump’s administration moved quickly to claim Good had been trying to kill the agents, an assertion Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called “bullsh**” and urged ICE to get out of his city. Thousands of protesters took to the frigid streets of Minneapolis after the shooting, holding signs reading “ICE out of MPLS”, a common abbreviation for the city. ICE’s federal agents have been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation drive, despite the objections of local officials.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched an aggressive recruitment campaign last summer to add 10,000 additional ICE agents to the existing 6,000-strong contingent. That sparked criticism that new officers in the field were insufficiently trained. DHS chief Kristi Noem said “any loss of life is a tragedy” but called the incident “domestic terrorism” and said Good “had been stalking and impeding (ICE’s) work all throughout the day”. “She then proceeded to weaponise her vehicle,” she said. Wednesday’s incident came during protest action against immigration enforcement in the southern part of Minneapolis.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)