Trump and other officials in Washington defended ICE, with the US president stating that the officer acted in self-defence. The mayor of Minneapolis disputed this claim, as he demanded ICE officers to leave the city.
Fresh demonstrations were expected in Minneapolis Thursday after a US immigration officer shot dead a woman in the city, sparking outrage from local leaders who rejected Trump administration claims her actions amounted to "domestic terrorism".
The woman, identified in local media as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was shot 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 attempting to open the woman's car door before another masked agent fires three times into the Honda SUV.
The vehicle then hurtles out of control and smashes into stationary vehicles, as horrified onlookers hurl abuse at the federal officers.
President Donald Trump's administration moved quickly to claim Good had been trying to kill the agents, an assertion Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called "bullshit" 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.
Similar protests demanding ICE leave were set to take place in front of a federal building and elsewhere in the Minneapolis area on Thursday, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the incident an "act of domestic terrorism," and claimed the woman had tried to run over the officer with her vehicle.
US President Donald Trump mirrored this stance and defended ICE's work, claiming that the woman driving the car was "very disorderly, obstrcuting and resisting".
Vice President JD Vance also supported ICE, stating in a post on X, “You can accept that this woman’s death is a tragedy while acknowledging it’s a tragedy of her own making.”
"I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice president, and the entire administration stands behind them," Vance wrote. "To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we're going to work even harder to enforce the law."
Minneapolis Mayor Frey disputed the federal government’s claims and instead accused ICE of sowing chaos in the city and called for the agency to leave Minneapolis.
"They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defence. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly. That is bullshit," he said at a press conference.
"What they (ICE) are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust. They're ripping families apart," Frey added.
In a separate televised interview with CNN, Frey added that it was clear to him the woman did not appear to intend to run anyone over, but instead was trying to flee, an action that he said did not authorise the use of lethal force.
Walz slams 'governing by reality TV'
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was the former running mate of Democrat Kamala Harris — who eventually lost to Trump in the presidential elections in late 2024 — also criticised the incident, referring to it as a part of a "propaganda machine".
Walz vowed his state would "ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation."
“We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s sensationalised operations are a threat, that someone’s going to get hurt,” he said. “It’s governing by reality TV, and today that recklessness cost someone their life.”
He also urged Minnesotans to protest peacefully and avoid providing reasons to the Trump administration to send in federal troops or declare martial law.
“They want a show, we can’t give it to them. We cannot. If you protest and express your first amendment rights, please do so peacefully as you always do,” Walz said. “We can’t give them what they want.”
The Minnesota City Council said Good, a mother of a six-year-old, was "out caring for her neighbours this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government".
She was a poet who loved movies, according to US media. She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
The killing of the woman comes just days after the Trump administration deployed roughly 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area in what it described as the "largest immigration operation ever".
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.