The incident occurred during an ICE operation on Jan. 7.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minnesota shot and killed an anti-ICE protester during an operation on Jan. 7, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
“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,” Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an X post on Wednesday.
The ICE officer fired shots at the protester, who was shot in the head and killed.
An undisclosed number of immigration officers were hurt in the process but are expected to make full recoveries, McLaughlin added.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged “folks to remain calm” in an X post.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the incident occurred as ICE officers were trying to move their vehicle out of the snow during an operation.
“They were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with their vehicle,” Noem said during a press conference from Brownsville, Texas, on Jan. 7.
President Donald Trump blamed the “radical left” for the rising tensions between ICE agents and protesters.
“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and 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.”
The ICE officer who fired the shot is recovering in the hospital, per Trump.
The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for additional details.
However, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has called on ICE to leave the city, insisted that self-defense was a “garbage narrative.”
“This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying,” Frey said in a news conference from city hall.
Minneapolis Police Department Police Chief Brian O’Hara, meanwhile, said at the press conference: “The preliminary information that we have indicates that this woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway on Portland Avenue, midway between 33rd Street and 34th Street in the city. At some point, a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot, and the vehicle began to drive off. At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
Noem confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security recently deployed 2,000 additional immigration agents to Minneapolis, and that in recent days, they’ve arrested “hundreds of criminals,” including people accused of fraud, murder, and rape.
By Jacki Thrapp
