Woman in Minnesota fatally shot by ICE agent during raid, video shows

Federal agents shot and killed a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Ilhan Omar, the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman, said the victim was “a legal observer” of action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which had sent a surge of agents into the city in recent days tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

A witness to the incident, Emily Heller, told local media that the victim was shot in the face multiple times. Heller said she saw a car blocking traffic that appeared to be part of a protest against the ICE operation, and heard an agent telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here”.

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in – like his midriff was on her bumper – and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller told MPR News, a Minneapolis public radio station.

A video posted to social media and another video obtained by the Guardian appeared to capture the moment of the shooting as a dark red SUV drove away from agents moving toward it, although the front of the vehicle is obscured.

In a post to X, the homeland security department (DHS) insisted the person was a “domestic terrorist” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted “to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”.

The department claimed several ICE officers were hurt, but said that they were expected to make “full recoveries”.

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” the DHS post said.

The videos mentioned above appear to contradict that statement, as it shows the SUV clearly backing up away from ICE officers as they approach. There is one ICE officer that can be seen partially in front of the car as the car moves forward and then away from the officers. That same ICE officer is seen firing his gun as the car appears to drive by him. Three gunshots can be heard ringing out.

There is no visible sign in the videos of ICE officers being injured. The agent who appeared to have fired the fatal shots is seen returning to a silver SUV that was driven away from the scene shortly after – through a red traffic light.

In a press conference, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, emphasized that the priority of local law enforcement was to get the victim to the hospital, and then to remove ICE from the scene because they were “making a difficult situation more problematic”.

He also noted that the video footage does not appear to show that a vehicle was being weaponized against the ICE officer.

Frey even issued an emphatic statement to ICE directly: “I do have a message for our community for our city and I do have a message for ICE. 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.

“People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Longterm Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized and now, somebody is dead.

Contining to address ICE, Frey said: “That’s on you. It’s also on you to leave. It’s on you to make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury, is not done.”

The mayor also said the DHS was “trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.”

Minneapolis chief of police, Brian O’Hara, told the press conference: “This woman was in her car and it appears then blocking the street because of the presence of federal law enforcement, which is obviously something that has been happening not just in Minneapolis but around the country.”

He said the victim was “a middle-aged white woman”, and that there was nothing to suggest she was the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity. Earlier, Frey said she was 37 years old.

The woman was no longer in the car when he arrived on the scene, O’Hara said, adding that “a spouse” had since arrived at the hospital. The police chief said the FBI would conduct a joint investigation with the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension.

Echoing Frey, Tim Walz, the Democratic Minnesota governor who announced this week that he will not run for a third term, posted on X that he had “seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.”

At a news conference later on Wednesday, Walz said that he had activated the state’s emergency operations center and “issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota national guard”.

“We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt,” Walz said.

To Minnesotans, Walz said: “I feel your anger, I’m angry” and he urged residents who plan on protesting to “please do so peacefully.”

Walz also said that the state does not “need any further help from the federal government”, adding: “To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, you’ve done enough.”

Omar also rejected claims made by DHS on X in a Wednesday afternoon post: “You’re lying. There was no attempt to run the officer over and no ICE agents appear to be hurt. Get out of our city.”

Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s Democratic lieutenant governor, issued a statement saying: “ICE has committed an unspeakable act of violence today.

“These masked agents are out of control and creating real chaos in our state. ICE must leave Minnesota immediately – before more people are hurt. In the face of their violence, let us remain peaceful, calm, and united. Minnesotans will not allow Trump and his thugs to turn our communities into war zones.”

In a statement on Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump weighed in on the shooting and defended the ICE officers, saying that he had watched a video clip of the incident and called it a “horrible thing to watch”.

Trump called one of the witnesses a “professional agitator” and described the woman driving the car as “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and said she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense”.

“Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital,” Trump said. “The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.”

Large numbers of protesters gathered close to the scene in the south of the city shortly after the shooting, with law enforcement officers firing chemical irritants in an attempt to disperse them.

In various video footage, bystanders can been seen and heard blowing whistles and taunting the federal agents, telling them to go home. A woman said she spoke to an eyewitness who told her the person shot was a woman who “took off” from federal agents.

“They shot her through the windshield. They shot her in the face,” the woman said.

Jon Collins, a reporter for MPR News, posted to Bluesky that protesters stopped ICE agents after the shooting and were pepper sprayed.

“ICE teargassed a lot of people as they drove down the alley. People were stuck in alley and hit hard. Some people are still getting medical treatment,” he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday it had launched an extraordinary immigration enforcement operation, with 2,000 agents and officers expected in the Minneapolis and St Paul area for a crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

The Immigration Defense Network, a coalition of groups serving immigrants in Minnesota, held a training session Tuesday night for about 100 people who are willing to hit the streets to monitor the federal enforcement.