TOI correspondent from Washington: A deeply polarized America extracted two different versions of a single incident in which a white female US citizen was shot dead by immigration enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday: MAGA Republicans and their ilk who support an immigration crackdown saw protestor Renee Good trying to run down the ICE agent trying to detain her, resulting in him gunning her down in self-defense. Democrats and liberals who oppose over-the-top immigration enforcement saw an unarmed, fearful woman, a mother of three, making way for ICE agents by pulling her vehicle away from them when she was fatally shot by trigger-happy officers who could have simply incapacitated the vehicle. The incident, which occurred less than a mile from where African-American George Floyd was killed by white police officer in 2020, has inflamed Minneapolis, a Democrat-run city already under siege by federal authorities because it is seen as a haven for Somali immigrants Washington says are bilking the US of billions in welfare fraud. The Trump administration is in no doubt where its support lies, with the president blaming “radical left” supporters for the incident.
“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” President Trump pitched in on social media ever before an inquiry established the sequence of events. “The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!” he added. Homeland secretary Kristi Noem described the woman’s actions as an “act of domestic terrorism,” asserting that agents were forced to fire in self-defense during what the administration has called violent resistance to the operation.But local officials and community members have disputed that account. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey denounced the federal explanation as a “garbage narrative,” saying he saw video footage that did not support the self-defense claim and accusing ICE agents of being trigger happy. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying,” Frey said, adding that ICE’s presence in Minneapolis has fostered “chaos and distrust.”ICE should “get the f*** out of Minneapolis.., you are not wanted here,” Frey said in an explosive public reaction.Several eyewitness videos and accounts reviewed by local media also suggest a more complex and ambiguous sequence of events than the one wheeled out by the MAGA administration. One video shows the woman’s SUV beginning to move after agents approached her, with no sign it was being driven aggressively or towards the officers, when the shots were fired. Good, a Colorado native currently living in Minneapolis, has been widely described by family and friends as a devoted mother, poet, and compassionate community member with no significant criminal history. Her mother, Donna Ganger, said her daughter was “probably terrified” in the moments before the shooting and remembered her as “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.”Good had reportedly dropped her six year old son at school before arriving at the scene of ICE action, ostensibly to join in a protest that have rocked Minneapolis. A GoFundMe page has raised over $530,000 for her family at the time of writing.
