Massive demonstrations continued into Tuesday night in Minneapolis as tensions rose between protesters and federal agents over the killing of a motorist last week by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
Hundreds of protesters gathered Tuesday outside the Graduate by Hilton hotel on the University of Minnesota campus, holding signs and shouting chants.
The protests began after 37-year-old Renee Good was shot to death on Jan. 7 by an ICE agent while in her vehicle. The Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday that the officer who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding from being hit by her vehicle. Videos of the shooting viewed from several angles do not indicate that Ross was struck.
Since Good’s killing, protesters have swarmed the streets in the Minneapolis area, some acting as legal observers, recording interactions between civilians and federal officers in hopes of compelling some level of accountability.
Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent hundreds of additional officers to Minnesota.
Videos in Minneapolis over the past week have shown people, often vastly outnumbered by immigration officers, pulled from vehicles, chased down the street and detained. At least one video shows agents using tear gas.
U.S. citizens in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area say they have been detained, questioned, threatened and even attacked by federal immigration officials in recent weeks, describing encounters that left them fearful and shaken despite their legal status.
On Jan. 8, one day after Good’s killing, immigration officers tackled two Target store employees – both of whom are U.S. citizens – in Richfield, Minnesota, and handcuffed them while they were working.
In a video of the incident, employee Jonathan Aguilar Garcia is shown confronting the officers as they approach the store, including U.S. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino. Garcia is seen shouting profanities and telling the officers to leave.
The video shows one officer approaching Garcia and tackling him to the ground as Garcia shouts, “I’m literally a U.S. citizen!” Several officers then shove the second employee to the ground. The men are handcuffed and taken away in a vehicle.
The Target store was closed for the rest of the day. Target did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Minnesota state Rep. Michael Howard confirmed Friday that the two men had been released but that they had suffered “injuries and untold trauma while their rights were trampled for no reason whatsoever.”
“If this doesn’t make your blood boil, I don’t know what will,” Howard said.
In a post on X on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said, “This individual was arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.” The post did not clarify whether the individual DHS was referring to was Garcia or the other employee.
The video does not appear to show the officers being assaulted by the Target employees or anyone around them.
On Monday, just two blocks from where an ICE agent fatally shot Good, Christian Molina said that ICE followed him on the way to a mechanic and when he refused to pull over and rammed his car.
Moments later community members swarmed the ICE officers, who then deployed tear gas and pepper spray.
Molina told MS NOW that he believed he was stopped “because I look Latino, I’m brown and I got a mustache.” He said he feared for his life during the incident.
“What if they kill me? What if they shot me right there?” he said. “Who’s going to help my wife raise my kids? What is she going to do with four kids?”
Molina’s wife, Lorena, was following behind him before the encounter, which she said made her feel sick.
“Thankfully, we are citizens,” she said, adding, “But I don’t feel safe being here in Minnesota.”
The DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the incident.
The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to block the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation. On Wednesday, Judge Katherine Menendez of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota declined to immediately block ICE without giving the federal government an opportunity to respond, but she said she would handle the case on an expedited basis.
Minneapolis is one of many cities targeted by the Trump administration in a nationwide crackdown on crime and immigration. Since President Donald Trump took office for a second term last year, immigration agencies and National Guard troops have been sent to cities including Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Memphis.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a reporter for MS NOW.