Walz readies National Guard, DHS sends in more officers as tensions mount in Minneapolis

The Trump administration sent even more federal law enforcement into Minneapolis and Gov. Tim Walz ordered the National Guard to stand ready to help police keep the peace as tensions simmered Thursday over the killing of a woman by an ICE officer.

Three law enforcement sources, including current and former officials, told MS NOW that federal officers and agents assigned to immigration operations from Chicago and other cities were moved to Minneapolis beginning late Wednesday.

Roughly 500 law enforcement personnel have been or will be moved to the Minneapolis area since an ICE officer shot and killed a woman there, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the operations. That was in spite of strongly worded calls from state and local officials, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, for ICE to leave the area altogether.

The Department of Homeland Security had already put about 2,000 agents and officers in the state as part of an immigration enforcement surge.

With the additional federal presence and with protesters occasionally clashing with officers for a second straight day, Walz directed state agencies, including the Guard, to prepare to support public safety efforts in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

On Thursday night, DHS and police in Portland, Oregon, said a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent shot a man and a woman while attempting to pull over their car. Police arrived and treated their wounds, and they were taken to a hospital, where their conditions were not known.

DHS issued a statement saying the agent fired in self-defense after the man tried to run him over — identical allegations to those the agency is making in the Minneapolis shooting. Portland officials did not confirm that account.

Earlier in the day, Minnesota law enforcement officials announced pointedly that the FBI was taking over the investigation of the Minneapolis shooting, despite initially agreeing to defer to a state unit — created after the killing of George Floyd — that reviews use-of-force cases.

News of the move by federal officials to cut off their state counterparts’ access to evidence in the killing of Renee Nicole Good came as the Trump administration doubled down on its insistence that the officer fired in self-defense. State and local officials have strongly rejected that account, based on multiple bystander videos of the encounter.

Investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrived on the scene Wednesday shortly after the shooting, after agreeing with the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office that the BCA’s Force Investigations Unit would run the probe, BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said Thursday.

“Later that afternoon, the FBI informed the BCA that the U.S. attorney’s office had reversed course: The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” Evans said.

That reversal happened as President Donald Trump and Cabinet officials were lauding the officer’s actions, saying Good “ran him over” despite video showing the car apparently never touched him. Democrats, including Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, blasted that as propaganda.

Administration officials have stuck to that story. In a combative news briefing at the White House on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said Good’s death was a tragedy of her own making, and that radical leftists were orchestrating attacks on federal law enforcement officials, which he called “classic terrorism.”

“The reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car and that guy acted in self-defense,” Vance said. “That is why she lost her life, and that is the tragedy.”

At a news conference in New York, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the officer was experienced and that he acted appropriately. She blamed activists for interfering with immigration agents.

“These individuals had followed our officers all day, had harassed them, had blocked them in. They were impeding our law enforcement operations, which is against the law, and when they demanded and commanded her to get out of her vehicle several times, she did not,” Noem told MS NOW. “This was an act of domestic terrorism.”

Multiple bystander videos show Good’s Honda Pilot partially blocking the two-lane street as officers approached. One of them stood in front of the car. Moments later, he drew his weapon.

The car did not appear to have come into contact with the officer, and its front wheels turned to the right as it gradually passed the officer on the left. No officers seemed to have sustained serious injuries.

Yet Trump insisted Wednesday that Good, a 37-year-old mother, “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” He similarly told The New York Times in an interview later that day that Good struck the officer, even asking an aide to play a video of the encounter in slow motion.

When Times reporters said the angle in the footage did not appear to show that the officer was run over, Trump deflected, saying, “Well … I — the way I look at it … ”

Democrats called for an investigation into the shooting, and protesters outside the federal courthouse Thursday demanded that ICE agents leave the city.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told MS NOW that his officers attempted to preserve evidence in order to “ensure that there can be a full and thorough investigation.”

O’Hara called on law enforcement leaders “to be the grown-ups in the room” and “re-evaluate our tactics,” alluding to the Trump administration’s surge of some 2,000 immigration officers into the state.

“I think anyone who is objective that looks at the situation can certainly at least say that what’s happening is causing chaos,” O’Hara said.

The BCA Force Investigations Unit was created in 2020 specifically to address the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

The bureau’s superintendent, Drew Evans, said the BCA is prepared to re-enage should the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI reconsider.

Regardless, he said, “We expect the FBI to conduct a thorough and complete investigation and that the full investigative file will be shared with the appropriate prosecutorial authorities at both the state and federal levels.”

Josh Einiger and Elizabeth Maline contributed to this report.