ICE officer fatally shoots Minnesota woman in her car

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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in her car in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, with federal and local authorities giving conflicting accounts of the events.

The Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer had “fired defensive shots” in response to an “act of domestic terrorism”.

But those claims were sharply rejected by Minneapolis’s Democratic mayor Jacob Frey, who accused the federal government of “trying to spin this as an action of self-defence”.

“Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit,” Frey said at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

In social media videos that appeared to show the events, a Honda Pilot blocked traffic on a residential street before several masked law enforcement officers approached the car. The driver reversed the car and then began to drive forward. One officer fired several shots at the driver at close range.

The shooting comes amid heightened tensions between the administration of President Donald Trump and state and local leaders in Minnesotawhere Democratic officials have been outspoken in their objection to ICE carrying out immigration raids.

“I have a message for ICE,” Frey said at Wednesday’s press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite.”

His comments were echoed by Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota.

“We do not need any further help from the federal government,” Walz said in a separate press conference on Wednesday. “To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: You have done enough”, he said, referring to the head of homeland security.

Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said an investigation was being led jointly by the FBI and Minnesota state authorities.

Trump posted one clip to his Truth Social platform, saying the woman driving the car was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and “violently, wilfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense”.

O’Hara said there was “nothing to indicate” that the woman was “the target of any law enforcement investigation activity”. She has not been named by law enforcement but Frey said she was 37 years old.

“This woman was in her car, and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement . . . she appears to be a middle-aged white woman,” O’Hara said. “It is obviously very concerning whenever there is a shooting into a vehicle of someone who is not armed.”

O’Hara’s comments contradicted earlier statements from Noem, who said at a press conference in Brownsville, Texas, that ICE agents had been “stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis” and “were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them”.

In a press conference in Minneapolis on Wednesday night, Noem said the woman who was shot was “blocking the officers in with her vehicle” and “had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day”.

The homeland security secretary said the woman “refused to obey” the commands of law enforcement officers and “proceeded to weaponise her vehicle” and “attempted to run a law enforcement over”.

Noem did not identify the ICE agent who fired the fatal shots. But she said he had “previously been dragged by an anti-ICE rioter who had rammed him with a car . . . back in June”.

O’Hara called for calm, encouraging protesters to demonstrate “safely and lawfully, to ensure that we do not have any further tragedy in the city or destruction”.

The shooting occurred less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, in an event that prompted large-scale protests across the US.

Two days before the shooting, Walz had announced he would not seek re-election as governor amid a federal investigation into fraudsters allegedly exploiting the state’s welfare programmes. Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding for Minnesota over the scandal.

Noem vowed to continue ICE operations in Minneapolis, saying: “Our federal law enforcement officers are here to bring peace and to bring public safety.”