Hundreds more federal law enforcement officers are arriving in Minneapolis following the Immigration and Customs Enforcement-involved shooting in the city last week.
The new officers began arriving Sunday and will continue to arrive in Minneapolis Monday, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The new arrivals will “allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely,” Noem said on Fox News Sunday, adding that immigration enforcement operations will “continue” in the city despite protests and opposition from elected Democrat leaders.
Anti-ICE protests have continued in Minneapolis since Wednesday, when an agent shot and killed a woman who appeared to obstruct immigration enforcement operations there.
According to the homeland security department’s account, the woman, Renee Nicole Good, was blocking vehicle traffic and, when approached by officers, attempted to weaponize her vehicle against an ICE agent who in turn fired his weapon at the driver.
A video of the incident published on Friday revealed a new vantage point from the agent’s perspective.
The additional agents join the roughly 2,000 immigration officers who were already deployed to Minneapolis earlier this month.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, has long been vocal about his opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations in his city. Frey has asked immigration officers to leave the city, and state, following the ICE-involved shooting last week.
“Today is a good day for ICE to get out of Minnesota,” Frey wrote on X Sunday.
Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat, “have been very clear that they’re going to continue their rhetoric, they’re going to continue to put criminals and corrupt illegal aliens above the people that live in that city and in that state, Noem said.
“They’ve said they’re not going to help us, so we’ll make sure that we protect our officers, but we also follow through on making sure these criminals are brought to justice.”
Last week, Walz floated the possibility of deploying the National Guard to protect Minnesotans, including from “rogue” federal agents.
The FBI is conducting an inquiry into the shooting. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, on Friday asked the public for evidence on the incident after reporting that state investigators were frozen out of the federal investigation.
Multiple videos of the incident have gone viral on social media, leading to speculation about the driver’s intent and criticism of the ICE agent’s decision to fire his weapon.
“Officers have to make decisions, you know, in split second time,” a retired ICE officer told The Daily Signal following the shooting.
“That officer had about a quarter second to decide to make that shot. He can’t see the wheels turning on the car. He’s looking straight on at the driver, not at the wheels,” the retired ICE officer continued.
“You don’t know … what he’s hearing at the time, how loud things were, … it was icy on the ground, he may not have felt that he could move fast enough” to get out of the way of the vehicle,” the retired officer speculated.
“There are all these different things that come in, and he’s taking all those senses and situation into effect in less than a quarter second to make the decision to pull his firearm.”
