Woman Shot and Killed by Ice Agent in Minneapolis

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0:32With new Gatorade Lower Sugar, my family and I can stay at the top of our game. No artificial flavors, sweeteners or colors, 75 % less sugar, and all the electrolytes of regular Gatorade. Now available nationwide. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We continue this breaking coverage out of Minneapolis, where an American citizen was shot to death, killed by an ICE agent. And the circumstances are not favorable for the Trump administration and its aggressive policies here. We'll go through the evidence we have. We also may learn more this hour from the United States government about its ongoing response.

1:06But the story exploded as soon as it happened, and there is all of this additional video. There also immediately were claims, which I can report, based on the evidence we have, appeared to be false from the government, even amidst this unfolding tragedy. So we begin with the video evidence that we have. I'm going to play what is a disturbing video of the shooting. It is graphic.

1:43No! No! Oh my f***ing God! What the f***? What the f***? You just f***ed. What the f*** did you do? That is, of course, a very clear angle on what was a very fast escalation. And now, because the actual conduct of the agents is in question tonight, indeed, as we will discuss, Minnesota authorities are looking into an investigation of whether the ICE agents broke the law in what was ultimately the killing of that citizen. So we're going to slow this down. You can see the ICE agents approach this car on foot. An agent appears to try to open the driver's side door. You can see that vehicle in some motion and you can see where the agents are positioned.

2:35The vehicle then, as you see, appears to be trying to drive basically down the road. We can debate the word choice, but ultimately it looks like driving away or an escape. You see it back up and then go off and to the right around that other vehicle. The agent fires three shots into the car. That is, at a minimum, before we get to a criminal law analysis, that is not considered a proper use of force in policing because based on what you have in this situation, there isn't the kind of predicate or apparent lethal threat to the officers. Indeed, while it's a chaotic situation, it looks like someone trying to effectively drive away.

3:14Now, as always, when we cover these type of stories, whether they involve domestic policing, local police, or in this case, federal agents operating under Donald Trump's much more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, we have to remind everyone we do not know what happened before this available video. There are things that we could learn that might change the context here. And I don't say that didactically. I say that quite seriously. I've seen these type of stories evolve one way or the other. I also want to mention authorities confirmed the victim was this 37-year-old woman, and she died from that gunshot wound to the head.

3:49According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, her mother has identified her as Renee Nicole Good and said she lived in the Twin Cities. So as we try to do with a story like this, you have now seen the video more than once. As I mentioned, it can be disturbing, especially once you know you're watching something that results in a shot to the head. But it's very important because the Trump administration's officials immediately made statements about this that basically conflict with what we can see with our own eyes on the video. And that is true that their statements seemed off from what is questionable behavior by the ICE agent for what we know now.

4:25Before we get into more information, and obviously this incident, the very swift killing of an American citizen by an ICE agent operating under the authority of the Trump administration, will surely be investigated thoroughly. We may learn a lot more. I want to now show you what the local official said on the beat here. Mayor Jacob Frey, was very clear in immediately responding with a message for ICE using strong language. To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite.

5:07it. Temper's high. The Trump administration has said it was deploying 2000 ICE agents to the city and it has sort of promoted it or at least touted it as the, quote, largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out. The first day of the operation has resulted in the death of this woman. Now, ICE released a statement that said the officer was acting in self-defense. I will read you what they say here. One of these violent rioters, that's how they're describing the individual in the vehicle, weaponized her vehicle attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.

5:46An act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement, and the safety of the public fired defensive shots. Now, when you watch the video, you can see for yourself what actually unfolded. So, whether the ICE agent had any reason to consider the individual in a car, a quote, violent rioter is not supported by what little we see here. And then you can see the agent firing the shot is over to the left. That's not to minimize the fact that these situations can to escalate and the agents could have faced some sort of threat. But the video that we have does not match on its face the claims by the Trump ICE spokespeople.

6:33Mayor Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O 'Hara were also quite clear on the facts in rejecting the ICE claim today. What I can tell you is the narrative that this was just done in self-defense is a garbage narrative. That is not true. It has no truth. And it needs to be stated very clearly since we have already seen a video of it. I do not know as to what you're talking about. In any professional law enforcement agency in the country, I think they would tell you it's obviously very concerning whenever there's a shooting into a vehicle of someone who's not armed. The individual being unarmed is an important detail because the standard of force under American law is that there has to be the threat of a lethal attack or grievous bodily injury for law enforcement to use deadly force.

7:33They have other levels of force, of course, and there are other things that can be done. But firing on an individual, in this case, what the agent may have seen, a woman in a car, does require that predicate. It may be that the ICE spokespeople felt that knowing that, they would just claim it. Because absent that type of legal defense, you are immediately in the territory of a question of whether this should be investigated and anyone should be charged inside the government for what is the killing of this citizen. State officials also tell us they're investigating the shooting with the FBI doing that as well.

8:07The mayor says people in the city of Minneapolis can be outraged. They can grieve. But he is insisting and urging everyone to do so peacefully. There's also a vigil plan for this evening. Reverend Al Sharpton is standing by and will join me as part of our coverage tonight. While we begin with Mark Claxton, retired NYPD detective director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, an individual that we've called on before in cases where, of course, law enforcement, which includes ICE, have a job to do and they face threats and we understand that. But there are also the rights of citizens and you've sort of walked that line between both of those obligations.

8:43First, your view of what the video shows. Well, Ari, the temptation for an old B cop like myself is to engage in some analysis on a tactical level about what we saw from the police officers on the street and how perhaps bad tactics may have contributed to what caused the death of this young lady. But that would be just a mistake to do. I think we have to really examine the level of threat and danger that the general public is faced with based on this ill-conceived kind of practice and policy. So not only do you have the civilian population placed at that additional risk, but you have law enforcement also negatively impacted by terrible, awful policies.

9:43And then you have this schism between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. You have federal law enforcement, you know, putting a patch over their agent, a patch on their vest and claiming to be police, which kind of connotes for people that these are street cops, familiar with local practices. And that is far from the case here. So it's very troubling, very disturbing. I don't think anyone is surprised. I think there was some expectation that there would be some disastrous outcomes as a result of this immigration policy, I guess you want to call it. And there should be significant concern about the use of these federal agents operating in local communities as, quote, unquote, police officers and what that does to the reputation of law enforcement specifically.

10:42Yeah. We talked about understanding what's happened there based on the evidence we have. I also want to play a video taken here from a bystander witness account. Take a look.

10:56basically ladies trying to warn everyone ice is in and um is in the neighborhood uh just letting them know hey and telling ice hey you're destroying families whatnot uh stop doing this hey get out of here stop that um she reversed so traffic can go by the pickup truck great pickup truck officer uh ice got out and was telling her hey um well didn't tell her anything really just telling her what uh i'm gonna open up your door and i'm gonna get you out and that's when the shooting happened and the car took off and then it sped off and crashed right into the cars mark just uh just terrible uh just just bad all around And I think that is a precursor for more tragedy if we don't change the direction of this particular enforcement method.

11:59Understood. And I appreciate you joining us as our first expert guest. Our thanks to Mark Claxton. We had the Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, able to join us on a very busy and difficult evening there. Your response to these events today and will the state investigate? I could say this is a tragic, tragically foreseeable incident because when you escalate with the number of ICE agents that Trump has done, when you recruit them, when you train them, when you signal to them that they don't have to operate under the normal rules by disclosing their identity, you let them wear masks, you do all these kind of things, you are going to have tragic incidents like this.

12:43It is foreseeable and it should be expected and it must be condemned. And, you know, we will investigate there. The state of Minnesota is part of the investigation. And this is important to go forward. There needs to be a situation where the feds are not just investigating the feds, you know, particularly when you got, you know, Kash Patel at the head of the FBI. And now we need to there needs to be state involvement. And I'm glad that there is. And yeah, you're mentioning something that a lot of people are wondering about as as we have a sitting president who's claimed all sorts of authorities.

13:22Some have been beat back in the courts. Others are sort of pending. Reverend Sharpton is going to be joining me later in the program. He and you have a history in this as well, have faced times where you're calling for an outside independent investigation like a federal probe because you don't trust local police necessarily to investigate themselves. I think Americans remember this for the years. Here, you got ICE agents doing stuff that, quite frankly, and I say this with all respect because some of them are just taking their orders. They have a job, but I'm not referring to the one who did the shot.

13:53But others are being told to patrol, just like National Guard, in ways that no other president has pushed this far, absent an actual ongoing American crisis, riots in the streets. What is what does it say that you feel we need to have a local investigation of the feds here and the kind of reverse federalism problems that you may be facing if Trump says, well, hey, you can't you can't look under the hood? Well, we've got to have a trans, we've got to have transparency. We've got to have meaningful accountability because we've got to have respect for law enforcement and hopefully one day meaningful cooperation, which you could not have if the relationships are completely destroyed.

14:37Right. What Trump and unknown don't seem to understand is that the way that you do proper law enforcement is with community, not against community. Community doesn't have any problem helping community to be safe and cooperating with law enforcement to do it. But when you make them the enemy, then you got a real problem. And so we need we need an independent investigation that does not involve only the feds investigating the feds. If this investigation is going to have any credibility at all. Yeah. You mentioned Secretary Noem and she is due to address this further tonight. But I want to play what she said and warned, as I mentioned to viewers earlier, we're playing the videos and the evidence first.

15:26We also, of course, included the ICE statement. What you are about to see based on the video evidence for viewers is misleading, but I'll let you respond on the other side. Here's Secretary Noam. It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over. For viewers, we have the video again. A few folks have joined us a quarter way into the hour.

16:00The statement from Noam, quote, is that a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over. That's not what the video shows, although people may debate how she drove around there. But you can see this here. Your response to the government, Attorney General. Deeply, deeply disappointing. I mean, it's just it's just it's just deeply heartbreaking to see a person responsible for the safety and enforcement of American law make such a brazenly false statement. It is truly sad for our democracy. I mean, I had the I actually served in Congress with Kristi Noem and I'm still shocked at some of the things I see her say and do because that's not the person I thought I knew.

16:49Um, yeah, she was conservative and I was a liberal Democrat, but I thought that we were still on the same planet. Apparently we're not. Uh, and apparently anything goes. And, and that is, that is something that is truly shocking. and, you know, look, if she really wanted to do her job in a professional way, as much as I don't like this policy and as much as I disagree with this, what the president is doing, if they did it in a professional way, it would make a meaningful difference. But saying things that are blatantly untrue in front of a camera, it's almost as if they're gaslighting the public, you know?

17:29So, yeah, I think I have one more piece of video that I want to show you as a, And that's difficult as a Minnesotan and a law enforcement official in the state. And this is, again, there was this situation and this confrontation and many videos made. And this one's hard to watch. But I actually believe, we think about this when we do the news, that it's important to show because you have the neighbors reacting to what happened, which is an ICE agent approached the car and shot this woman in the face and killed her. And so this is the real-time moments after. And I say this because for those who may want to turn away or change the channel, that's a personal choice.

18:05It's understandable as well. This is about 30 seconds. We're going to play it now.

18:31neighbor. You caught your butter in the face. You killed my neighbor. How do you show up to work every day? How the do you do this every day? Attorney General, this is happening, of course, in the streets of your state, and you see the scene, the militarized presence, the shock, grief, and outrage of those citizens. Your response? Well, I have been getting a relentless number of emails and calls from neighbors who are very upset, not just for the tragedy of this woman and her family, but for the neighbors who live in there, for our immigrant community members who are living in terror. This is unprecedented in American society.

19:20It is reminiscent of other societies which went authoritarian. And just the raw emotion of that woman, I feel every bit of it. And I'm right with her. And I think that she was just channeling how all of us really do feel in many, many ways. Attorney General Allison, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it tonight. We now turn to Reverend Al Sharpton, our colleague on MSNOW, president of National Action Network, who's dealt with many policing scenarios and victims' families. Your view is tonight. I think that this is on his face as bad as it gets. When you have someone, this, first of all, ICE has been inundating this city.

20:07I have a lot of allies in the city. We work. George Floyd happened in the city. So I'm not talking in a vacuum. And when you have this kind of occupation and people questioning it, you don't have tensions raised by misleading the public on what happens. To identify these people as rioters, we've looked at the video. We've looked at the video even after when you just showed the concerned neighbor. And I'm being polite, saying concerned, outraged neighbor. Yeah. There were no rioters. So what is Norm talking about? That there was rioting going on. There was no violence. At best, this woman that was killed, a citizen, we're told, 37-year-old white woman citizen may have been angered by them and the way they handled or whatever her reason.

21:01She was putting none of them in danger. They were not trying to defend themselves and they were not rioters. So how do you trust the government whose narrative coming out the chute is to mislead, if not outright lie to the public about the circumstances of a woman shot and killed in cold blood? But there's no weapons found with the woman. The woman is driving away from them, not driving to them to try and drive over someone as far as we can see. So this is as bad as it gets. It's a moral disgrace on top of that. And stay with me. We're going to listen briefly to the secretary's first formal press conference tonight.

21:43Here on the ground. I also just got off the phone a little while ago with Governor Walz and spoke to him as well. I want to reiterate first with all of you the facts of what happened today. At 1025 a.m. Central Time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement were carrying out lawful operations here in Minneapolis. Because of the adverse weather that Minneapolis has seen in recent snow, one of the vehicles became stuck and ensnared in the snow. Law enforcement were attempting to push out this vehicle, and when a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in, shouting at them, and impeding law enforcement operations.

22:20ICE officers and agents approached the vehicle of the individual in question, who was blocking the officers in with her vehicle, and she had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day. ICE agents repeatedly ordered her to get out of the car and to stop obstructing law enforcement, but she refused to obey their commands. She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over. This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism. The ICE officer, fearing for his life and the other officers around him, and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.

23:02He used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues. He was treated at a local hospital, has been released, and is now with family. I encourage the American people at this point in time to pray for him, but also to pray for the deceased's family and her loved ones. Today alone in this country, there have been four different domestic terrorist attacks on federal officers by the ramming of vehicles. Three of them happened here in Minneapolis. We've seen over 100 of these vehicle ramings happen in just recent weeks, and this must stop. Ice alone is facing a 1 ,300 % increase in assaults against them and an 8 ,000 % increase in death threats against all of them.

23:45In fact, the very same officer who was attacked today had previously been dragged by an anti-Ice rioter who had rammed him with a car and drug him back in June. He sustained injuries at that time as well. And let me remind you why we're all here in this city today and why we've been here. In communities across this country and here in Minneapolis, we're just enforcing the laws that we have in this country. For years under President Biden, tens of millions of dangerous criminal illegal aliens, terrorists and suspected terrorists were allowed to invade our country over our southern border. They were allowed to steal, to defraud and to perpetuate violence against American citizens.

24:26Regardless of who your mayor or who your governor is, President Trump promised every single American that he would make America safe again. He promised every single American that he would work to protect them from dangerous criminals. Since Governor Walz has been in charge of Minnesota, we have seen homicides go up by over 50 percent. That's also during Mayor Fry's tenure as well. Since President Trump took office, Governor Walz has released over 470 violent criminals back onto the streets here in Minneapolis. We've been listening to Secretary Kristi Noem give that briefing there, her first formal briefing devoted to this.

25:04She made several assertions there, including saying that a mob was blocking the officers in and that they view this as an effort to weaponize and run over the officer. The video, which we played several times tonight, does not show the car going at the officer, but rather making the turn to the right. She said they view this as an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm. That's the very legal standard I mentioned earlier, which is the only legal justification for using that kind of force. The ICE agent shot this individual in the face, killing her. And then she discussed how they view this as domestic terror attacks.

25:36There is a wide gap between the available evidence and what local officials are saying, including one we heard tonight and Kristi Noem's claims on behalf of the Trump administration. We will monitor the rest of that press conference if there is news. She shifted from details today, which we did broadcast, to a wider set of policy arguments, including their disagreements with local officials in Minnesota regarding immigration. But we do have people monitoring that in case there's other news. I want to bring in now Democratic Congressman Jim Hines. He's the ranking Democrat in the House Intelligence Committee, which has been busy with more than one issue right now.

26:08First, your response to this shooting today, whether you think it's a product of the Trump ICE policies and any response you have to what we just heard from the secretary. Yeah, Ari, you know, in situations like this, and they happen all too often, police shootings, law enforcement shootings, I always think that the adult civil human thing to do is to withhold judgment until the facts are in, especially in a moment of political polarization and anger and rage. Of course, the Trump administration and Kristi Noem did the precise opposite. And this time the American people are going to see it because, again, we may not have every angle on that.

26:45But it is very obvious that not only did she show a total lack of compassion for what had just happened, an American citizen, a woman is dead. She lied to us. There was no vehicle stuck in the snow. There was no attempt to use the vehicle as a weapon. America will see the facts and then reflect on the lies that Kristi Noem just told. And to the larger question that you ask, sadly, I'm not one bit surprised about this. This was inevitable. When you have a leadership, when you have an administration that turns everything, everything into a war in which violence and testosterone and aggression are the only solutions.