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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman Wednesday during an immigration-related operation in Minneapolis in which she did not appear to be the target, local and federal officials said.
Dueling narratives emerged over what led to the shooting. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed the woman “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed back on DHS’s narrative in a press conference Wednesday afternoon, saying, “they are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense,” referring to ICE. “Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is b—s—.”
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Immigration enforcement officers were conducting targeted operations in Minneapolis when the shooting happened, but it’s unclear what operation ICE was conducting in that particular neighborhood.
Several video clips of the incident emerged on social media.
In one video, a gray pick-up truck is seen pulling up to a burgundy SUV stopped perpendicular to the truck as someone shouts “get the f— out of our neighborhood.” Agents get out of the truck, and one walks up to the SUV and yanks on the driver’s door handle, ordering the driver to get out. The vehicle reverses.
Another agent is standing near the front of the SUV as it pulls forward. The agent appears to draw his firearm and as the SUV drives forward in his direction he moves backward, shooting into the SUV as it drives off, the video shows.
In another video showing a different angle of the scene, the agent appears to be knocked back as the SUV drives forward before crashing into a parked car and hitting a light pole. President Donald Trump attached the video clip showing this angle to a post on Truth Social, saying the woman driving was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” and that it was hard to believe the agent survived the incident.
Police described the deceased as a “middle-aged white woman” who did not appear to be the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, called the gunfire that killed the woman “defensive shots.”
“He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” she said.
Frey, the mayor, said after the shooting the first priority of local law enforcement was to get the victim to the hospital, and the second was to get ICE off the scene because they were “making a difficult situation more problematic.”
Frey had a message for federal immigration agents in the city.
“To ICE, get the f— out of Minneapolis,” the mayor said. “We do not want you here.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a press conference that the agents’ vehicles got stuck in the snow and they were trying to push them out when the woman “attacked them.”
“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” she said, without providing further evidence.
Frey said it did not appear from video of the incident that the vehicle was being weaponized against the agent.
“This woman was in her car and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement, which is obviously something that has been happening not just in Minneapolis but around the country,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at the mayor’s news conference.
O’Hara expressed concern about the tactics used by ICE agents.
“I do not know the exact circumstances of the shooting, but I would tell you, in any professional law enforcement agency in the country … it’s obviously very concerning whenever there’s a shooting into a vehicle of someone who’s not armed,” he said, noting that at times it could be justified, but that “most law enforcement agencies in the country have trained very intensely to try and minimize the risk” of using deadly force.
Aidan Perzana, 31, said he witnessed the incident and it didn’t look like the woman was trying to run over an agent.
“I heard that Noem is trying to say they were trying to run down an officer. There was plenty of space between the officers at that point for the vehicle to make it through,” he told NBC News, adding that it looked like the driver was trying to flee.
Aidan’s wife Grace Perzana, 32, said the family has lived in the neighborhood two and a half years and “we love it.”
“We are really happy here. We have a giant shark statue in our front yard and our neighbor has a giant T-Rex statue,” she said. “There is a lot of community art, a lot of people having barbecues with music in their backyards.”
Residents and locals gathered in the street after the shooting, chanting and throwing snowballs in the direction of federal agents, KARE reported. Law enforcement deployed pepper spray and tear gas.
McLaughlin said the ICE officers injured during the incident are expected to recover. She did not detail what type of injuries the agents sustained.
Trump has unleashed immigration agents in cities across America, who have been employing increasingly aggressive tactics. The push has ramped up tensions with local officials in some cities and communities that are increasingly protesting the efforts.
In September, in the Chicago area, an ICE agent fatally shot a man during a traffic stop. His family called for justice and local police said the FBI had been investigating the death.
Since arriving in Minneapolis in early December, ICE officers and agents have arrested roughly 1,400 people, McLaughlin previously said. That is a significant increase from the roughly 300 arrested by Dec. 12.
DHS this week sent hundreds more officers and agents to bolster immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, with the agency posting on social media that it is waging “the largest DHS operation ever” in Minnesota.
The immigration enforcement operation will add up to 2,100 officers, according to two senior DHS officials. The administration began swelling the numbers Sunday and planned to continue adding forces Wednesday, the officials said. That total includes 1,500 enforcement and removal officers and 600 Homeland Security Investigations agents.
The rush of more enforcement follows the posting of a video by a conservative content creator the day after Christmas that alleged Somali-run day care centers in Minneapolis were defrauding American taxpayers by taking federal grant money and not providing any services to children.
The FBI surged investigators in the city to look into the allegations soon after the video was posted, HSI has been door-knocking on Somali businesses since last week and the state of Minnesota concluded from its on-site checks of 10 Somali day care centers targeted in the video that they were operating normally, with children at every site except one, which was not yet open to investigators when they arrived to investigate.
Grace Perzana said she did not believe there were many people of Somali descent on the street where Wednesday’s shooting happened, but said she does have many “Latinx” neighbors.
Trump disparaged Somalis last month, saying they had destroyed Minneapolis and the country. He called Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, “garbage” and said Somalis should return to where they came from and fix it. Omar’s family fled civil war in Somalia and lived in a Kenyan refugee camp before she moved to the U.S. and became a citizen.
Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.
I am NBC News’ Senior Homeland Security Correspondent.
Suzanne Gamboa is a national reporter for NBC News.
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