Minnesota braces for what’s next after immigration arrests and the killing of Renee Good
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- Minnesota’s Twin Cities brace for what the Department of Homeland Security calls its largest immigration enforcement operation, with federal agents conducting raids across neighborhoods.
- Minneapolis and state officials demand state involvement in investigating the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer, questioning federal impartiality.
- The killing sparked nationwide protests, with thousands marching in Minneapolis against the immigration enforcement sweep.
MINNEAPOLIS — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation.
Protesters screamed at heavily armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.
There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents knocked down the door of one home Sunday. They later took one person away in handcuffs.
“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis City Council member. “They’ve definitely been out here.”
Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring and gathering information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.
People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.
More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of training sessions to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization.
“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.
The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.
Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.
While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said Sunday that the investigation into the shooting shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.
“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened?” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying that he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that she had “weaponized” her vehicle.
Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing.”
“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds ... to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents’,” he said.
Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”
More than 2,000 immigration arrests have been made in Minnesota since the operation began in early December, said Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
The killing of Good on Wednesday by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Ore., led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend, including thousands of people who rallied in Minneapolis.
Santana, Householder and Vancleave write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.
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