Federal immigration officers killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman Wednesday amid a massive enforcement surge in the Minnesota city. Federal officials said the woman tried to “run over” agents in an “attempt to kill them.” But local officials and witnesses at the scene said the woman was no threat to the agents and the shooting was unjustified.
The shooting happened after the department deployed more than 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to the city in what the agency calls its largest operation ever.
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A witness who spoke to local CBS News affiliate WCCO-TV said she heard two gunshots and then a car crash.
“I see a red truck, airbag inflated, with blood all over it and a woman on the side of the road, and the ambulance trying to come through,” she said.
Another witness told the station he saw two apparent ICE agents in fatigues trying to enter the woman’s car, a red SUV, with one pulling on the door handle. The driver backed up a few feet and tried to pull forward, but neither ICE agent was still trying to open the door. The witness said the agent on the driver’s side fired two to three shots through the window, and the car lurched forward 30 to 40 feet and crashed into a parked car.
Videos show shooting
Videos posted online show the shooting from multiple angles. One widely circulated video shows a red SUV stopped at an angle on the road. It then shows a pickup truck with blue and red lights embedded into its front grill pulling up to the driver’s side of the vehicle. Two agents in tactical gear step out, order the driver out of the vehicle and try to open the SUV’s door. The driver reverses, angles her front wheels away from the agents at her driver’s side door and then pulls forward. A third agent at the front of the SUV fires at the driver. The SUV then crashes into a parked vehicle.
The same video also shows that the agent who fired at the driver leaves the scene about two minutes after the shooting.
At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the woman was not a target of any ICE action. “She appears to be a middle-aged white woman,” he said. The woman’s mother later identified her as Renee Nicole Good, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune. The mother, Donna Ganger, said Good lived in Minneapolis with her husband and that the whole situation was “so stupid” and that her daughter “was probably terrified.”
Ganger said Good was not part of any protest against ICE or “anything like that.”
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” she told the Star Tribune. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
The Tribune also said they found an Instagram account belonging to Good. She described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom” and said she was originally from Colorado.
Local officials reacted angrily to the shooting.
“What we know is a 37-year-old woman is dead, and she was shot by ICE,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.
Responding to the claims that the shooting was an act of self-defense, Frey said, “That is bulls–t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
He added, “I have a message for ICE: to ICE, get the f–k out of Minneapolis.”
DHS defends shooting
The Department of Homeland Security said the shooting was justified, calling the driver’s actions “an act of domestic terrorism.” In a post on X, the department said the agent who fired his weapon feared for his life and the woman attempted to kill the agent and others.
Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.…
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 7, 2026
At a news conference Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the ICE agents had been stuck in snow “and were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them.”
“This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and our law enforcement are under every single day,” Noem said. “These vehicle rammings are domestic acts of terrorism.”
Videos from the scene refute her version of events, however. The agents were neither stuck in the snow nor trying to push their vehicles. The only vehicle that was rammed was the parked car the woman’s SUV struck after she was shot.
President Donald Trump also said the shooting was justified. In a post on Truth Social, Wednesday afternoon, he said the shooting was a “horrible thing to watch.” But he said the woman was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and said she “violently, willfully, and viciously” ran over the ICE agent. He said the agent appeared to fire in self-defense.
The president said the woman injured the agent, who is recovering in a hospital. Trump did not say how serious the injuries were, and videos at the scene did not appear to show any of the three agents involved in the incident being struck by the vehicle.
Public response
Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez, who represents the community where the shooting took place, said the federal agent who killed the woman should be “arrested effective immediately.“
He encouraged his community to “patrol our neighborhoods.”
“We need community patrols on our streets, preventing the kidnapping of our neighbors from these inhumane ICE agents that are only here to tear our families apart,” Chavez told WCCO.
WCCO said that federal agents used chemical irritants on protesters who gathered at the scene following the shooting. They said protesters throwing snowballs at federal vehicles prompted the response.
The local affiliate said it appeared that federal agents left the scene and local law enforcement stepped up for crowd control. Police set up metal gates between protesters.
Hundreds of people gathered around the scene of the shooting for hours afterward. Minneapolis police set up barricades to control the crowds, and officials called for calm.
During a press conference hours after the shooting, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged the state’s residents not to play into the Trump administration’s hands by turning to violence.
“To Minnesotans: Don’t take the bait, do not take the bait,” Walz said. “Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law. Do not allow them to lie about the security or the decency of this state, and let’s let this investigation play itself out.”
Minneapolis was the scene of violent protests in 2020 after police officers killed George Floyd. Floyd’s murder stirred a racial reckoning across the country, including the creation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that Trump now claims are illegal. In case of a large demonstration, Walz ordered the Minnesota National Guard to prepare for possible deployment.
He deplored both the shooting and the political rhetoric from the Trump administration afterward.
“This was so, so preventable,” Walz said. “I don’t know, maybe we’re at the McCarthy moment: Do you have no decency? Do you have no decency?”
