Tensions in Minneapolis.
Credit: Reuters Photo
By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Mitch Smith and Hamed Aleaziz
A federal agent shot and injured a man in Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, federal officials said, an incident that touched off hours of clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers and that came just one week after an immigration agent killed a woman in the city.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that federal agents were trying to arrest a man from Venezuela who was in the country illegally in a “targeted traffic stop” at around 6:50 p.m. She said that he fled from agents.
When the officer caught up to him, McLaughlin said he “began to resist and violently assault the officer.” She said two people came out of a nearby building and, along with the man being sought, they attacked the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
The officer feared for his life and fired shots, striking the man whom agents were were seeking in the leg, McLaughlin said. The agent and the man who was shot were in the hospital, she added, and the other two people she accused of attacking the agent were in custody.
The federal government’s narrative could not immediately be verified. City officials said the person who was shot had “apparent non-life-threatening injuries.” The agent’s condition was not immediately clear.
Minneapolis residents have protested repeatedly in the week since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot an American woman, Renee Nicole Good, on the south side of Minneapolis.
City officials said the latest shooting occurred on the city’s north side, in the 600 block of 24th Avenue North. At a news conference, Brian O’Hara, the city’s police chief, said his understanding was that a 911 call appeared to have been made from a house. He said the caller reported that the man was running from immigration agents and was driving toward the residence.
Neighbors said they saw federal agents ordering people inside the house to come out with their hands up, and that several people, including children, walked out.
Mayor Jacob Frey said after the shooting that “there’s still a lot that we don’t know” but that “this is not sustainable.” He reiterated his call for ICE to leave.
“This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in,” Frey said. “And at the same time, we are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to maintain order.”
As word of the latest shooting spread, at least 200 protesters gathered near the apparent scene Wednesday night. A group of them yelled at Minneapolis police officers who had blocked the street to traffic, telling the local officers that the federal agents should be arrested.
O’Hara, said the crowd at the scene was “engaging in unlawful acts.” He and the mayor urged people to leave the area near the shooting.
“They have thrown fireworks at police officers and at multiple times, gas has been deployed,” O’Hara said.
Several heavily armed Border Patrol agents arrived in a large, military-style vehicle outside the crime scene tape. Protesters swarmed the vehicle and yelled and threw snowballs at agents who had gotten out.
The agents eventually retreated, and as they left, they fired at least two canisters of gas that made a loud bang and made it difficult for some to breathe.
A few minutes later, at least two ICE agents arrived in an unmarked SUV and sprayed chemical agents in the faces of protesters who approached them, causing one protester to say that he could not see. At one point, a protester fired several fireworks toward retreating ICE agents and their cars.
Law enforcement agents used chemical agents against protesters, and at least two people could be seen being taken into custody. Protesters damaged an unmarked vehicle with police lights.
A Minneapolis police officer who identified himself as a supervisor to several protesters told them he did not know exactly what happened. “It’s not like they’re talking to us,” he said, referring to the federal agents on scene.
Federal Bureau of Prisons officers were seen carrying out crowd-control duties alongside state troopers. Agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were also at the scene, though it was not clear whether they had a role in investigating the shooting. That agency was excluded from the FBI inquiry into Good’s death.
Some 3,000 federal immigration agents have flooded the Minneapolis area in recent weeks, angering residents and local officials. The Trump administration has defended the deployment as necessary to cracking down on illegal immigration and rooting out fraud.
Shortly before the latest shooting was reported Wednesday night, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota gave a speech that called on the Trump administration to “end this occupation.”
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, referred to a “Minnesota insurrection” in a social media post after the shooting and accused Walz and Frey, both Democrats, of making the situation worse.
Liish Kozlowski, a Democratic state representative, said that Minnesotans should be “enraged” by the report of another ICE-related shooting, adding that “we’ve been raising alarms that they are not here for public safety or for fraud or for the well-being of anybody, but to hunt and harm us.”