A federal officer with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has fatally shot a woman during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major United States city, officials have said, prompting protests, school closures and calls to resist immigration enforcers.
Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot in the head in front of a family member on Wednesday morning while behind the wheel of her SUV in a snowy residential neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis.
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Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, described the incident 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”, prompting the officer to shoot in self-defence.
But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey dismissed that account as “garbage”, saying it was disproved by video footage of the incident.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defence. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bull****,” the mayor said.
He criticised the federal deployment of more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul as part of the immigration crackdown following allegations of fraud involving the local Somali community.
“What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said, calling on the immigration agents to leave.
“They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”
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.
‘Shame! Shame!’
The shooting took place in a modest 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 (1 mile) from where George Floyd was murdered by policeman Derek Chauvin in May 2020, prompting mass Black Lives Matter protests during Trump’s first presidency.
Following Macklin Good’s shooting, protesters quickly gathered at the scene, shouting, “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 US on Wednesday evening.
Minneapolis Public Schools cancelled school, sports and activities for Thursday and Friday, saying in a statement that the decision was “due to safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city”.
‘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 Macklin 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.
After the gunfire, Macklin 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 Macklin 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.”
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused the Trump administration of spreading false information, and said she was “beyond outraged” by ICE’s “reckless, callous actions”.
“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.”
Victim ‘extremely compassionate’
In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom”.
The victim’s ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, told The Associated Press news agency that Macklin Good had just dropped off her six-year-old son at school in Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a street in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri.
He described Macklin Good as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union, he said.
Macklin Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper that her daughter was “extremely compassionate”.
“She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” she said.
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 childcare in the city.
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.
Macklin Good’s death is at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration, AP reported, while The Trace news site has documented at least 28 instances where federal agents opened fire or brandished a gun during an immigration enforcement operation.
