Kristi Noem vows to send ‘hundreds’ more agents to Minneapolis as protests erupt across US

Thousands of people took to the streets across the US this weekend to express their outrage over the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an immigration officer, even as the head of homeland security, Kristi Noem, pledged on Sunday to send “hundreds more” federal agents to the city.

Demonstrators in Minneapolis marched toward the residential street where Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on Wednesday while driving away in her car.

Officials said 30 people had already been arrested during Saturday’s protests, and that one police officer was injured after a “chunk of ice was thrown”. The mayor, Jacob Frey, said the “vast majority of community members have demonstrated peacefully”.

The turnout for the Minneapolis protest, amid strong, frigid winds, highlighted the widespread fury sparked by the killing of Good, as well as other recent ICE shootings, including in Portland, Oregon, that have left three other people injured this week.

Good’s death, which was caught on video from multiple angles, has energized protests in major metropolitan areas as well as smaller communities. Large groups of protesters poured into the streets of several cities on Saturday, including Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, with some actions extending into the night and continuing on Sunday.

Democratic leaders in Minnesota and Donald Trump’s administration have presented sharply contrasting versions of the shooting, which occurred shortly after approximately 2,000 federal agents were sent to the Minneapolis–St Paul region in what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as its largest operation to date. Trump administration officials have accused Good without evidence of being a “domestic terrorist” and Trump said the ICE agent was “run over”, despite video clearly showing that is untrue.

A visibly impassioned Frey responded to the death earlier this week by telling ICE officers to leave the city. On Sunday, he explained to NBC’s Meet the Press that he was critical of the administration’s decision to refuse to allow Minneapolis state investigators to assist in the FBI’s investigation, accusing the Trump administration of being “so quick to jump on a narrative as opposed to the truth”.

Candles, flowers and signs are placed at a makeshift memorial honoring Renee Nicole Good and other victims of police and immigration enforcement violence outside a home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Sunday. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images

Later on Sunday, Noem doubled down. “We’re sending more officers today and tomorrow,” she told Fox News. “There will be hundreds more in order to allow our ICE and our border patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely.”

In Los Angeles, protesters assembled on Saturday evening outside a cluster of federal buildings downtown. Marchers moved along Alameda Street, carrying inverted American flags and homemade signs criticizing ICE.

That same street was the scene of confrontations between protesters and police in June of last year, when crowds rallied against immigration raids and Trump’s deployment of the national guard.

The Los Angeles police department later issued a dispersal order for the section of Alameda Street where demonstrators had gathered, telling protesters in a post on social media: “You must leave the area.”

Large crowds also turned out throughout California’s Bay Area, with protests reported in Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, San Jose and other cities across the state. In San Francisco, hundreds of protesters filled Van Ness Avenue and O’Farrell Street around midday, between Japantown and Union Square, as passing drivers honked in support. Another group gathered at Ocean Beach to form a human banner reading “IT WAS MURDER – ICE OUT,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

About 1,000 additional demonstrators assembled in Salt Lake City, circling Washington Square Park while police halted traffic. The group later positioned themselves in front of Utah’s third district court across State Street.

“Law enforcement do not wear masks,” Sarah Buck, an organizer for the protest, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “We do need to have patience and see if an investigation takes place the way it should.”