Hundreds more officers to be sent to Minnesota amid protests over fatal ICE shooting

MINNEAPOLIS - The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is sending “hundreds” more officers to Minnesota a day after tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis

to protest against the fatal shooting of a woman

by an immigration agent, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in remarks that aired on Jan 11.

The officers would be deployed on Jan 11 and 12 to bolster the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol officials already in Minnesota, Ms Noem said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures programme.

Some 2,000 federal officers have already been dispatched to the Minneapolis-St Paul area in what DHS has called its largest operation ever.

The new deployments were scheduled to begin even as more than 1,000 rallies were planned nationwide last weekend to protest against the federal government's deportation push and Jan 7’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an ICE officer. 

Minnesota officials have called the shooting unjustified,

pointing to bystander video

they say showed Ms Good's vehicle turning away from the agent as he fired.

Ms Noem and other US officials have maintained that the agent acted in self-defence because Ms Good, a volunteer in a community network that monitors and records ICE operations in Minneapolis, drove forward in the direction of the agent who then shot her, after another agent had approached the driver's side and told her to get out of the car.

In a separate Jan 11 appearance on CNN's State Of The Union, Ms Noem said other video footage showed Ms Good protesting against ICE agents at other locations earlier on the morning of Jan 7, but did not say if or when it would be publicly released.

She also accused the Democrats of encouraging violence against immigration officers, reiterating the Trump administration’s position that Ms Good was a “domestic terrorist”.

Prominent Democratic officials, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have strongly disputed this narrative, saying that footage from the scene shows Ms Good’s vehicle turning away from the agent and not posing a threat to his life.

Ms Noem said on CNN: “These locals, if you look at what Governor Walz has said, if you look at what Mayor Frey has said, they’ve extremely politicised and inappropriately talked about the situation on the ground in their city.

“They’ve inflamed the public. They’ve encouraged the kind of destruction and violence that we’ve seen in Minneapolis the last several days.”

Since the Jan 7 shooting, thousands of people have demonstrated peacefully in several cities across the country, demanding a full investigation into the circumstances of the deadly encounter.

Democratic officials are particularly critical of the fact that local investigators have been excluded from the investigation, which is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Mr Frey told CNN: “It should be a neutral, unbiased investigation where you get the facts.”

He also described as legitimate activists’ actions to disrupt immigration enforcement operations, such as the one which Ms Good was involved in.

“You need to enforce laws, of course, but there’s also a requirement that you carry out laws and carry out enforcement in a constitutional way,” Mr Frey added.

“We’ve got pregnant women getting dragged through the street. We’ve got high schoolers just getting – American citizens, by the way – getting taken away.”

Minnesota authorities on Jan 9 said they were opening their own criminal investigation into the incident, after some state law enforcement officials said the FBI was refusing to cooperate with state investigators.

White House border security czar Tom Homan said on Fox News Sunday that he wanted to let the investigation play out, but that he “truly believe(s) that officer thought his life was in danger to take that action”. REUTERS, AFP