ICE officer shoots and kills a woman during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal officer shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist when she allegedly tried to run over law enforcement officers during an immigration crackdown in the city, authorities said Wednesday.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot the woman in her vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major American cities under the Trump administration. It’s at least the fifth person killed in a handful of states since 2024.

The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have been on edge since DHS announced Tuesday that it had launched the operation, with more than 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

A large throng of protesters gathered at the scene after the shooting, where they vented their anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official who has been the face of crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

In a scene that hearkened back to the Los Angeles and Chicago crackdowns, bystanders heckled the officers and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.

‘’Shame! Shame! Shame!’’ and ‘’ICE out of Minnesota!’’ they loudly chanted from behind the police tape.

‘’We are demanding ICE leave the city and state immediately. We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities," Frey said on social media.

The area where the shooting occurred is a modest neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and a mile (1.6 kilometers) from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

‘’We’ve been trying to live life as fully as possible in light of the fear and anxiety that we feel,’’ said the Rev. Hierald Osorto, pastor at St. Paul’s-San Pablo Lutheran Church, which has a predominantly Latino congregation in the area.

During a news conference in Texas on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the agency had deployed more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities and already made ‘’hundreds and hundreds’’ of arrests.

For nearly a year, migrant rights advocates and neighborhood activists across the Twin Cities have been preparing to mobilize in the event of an immigration enforcement surge. From houses of worship to mobile home parks, they have set up very active online networks, scanned license plates for possible federal vehicles and bought whistles and other noise-making devices to alert neighborhoods of any enforcement presence.

‘’I feel like I’m an ordinary person, and I have the ability do something so I need to do it,’’ Mary Moran told KMSP-TV.

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