1 of 2 | Federal officers push back protesters Thursday after a scuffle broke out outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, Minn., a day after a woman was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. Photo by Craig Lassig/EPA
The Minnesota agency set up to probe use of force incidents said Thursday that the FBI has pushed it out of the investigation of an immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a woman at a protest.
Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said the agency’s Force Investigations Unit was initially set to carry out a joint investigation of the Wednesday shooting along with the FBI. This was decided Wednesday after a meeting between the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
“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 in a statement.
He said because the bureau can’t have full access to evidence and other information collected, it has withdrawn from the investigation.
“The BCA Force Investigations Unit was designed to ensure consistency, accountability and public confidence, none of which can be achieved without full cooperation and jurisdictional clarity,” Evans 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 sate and federal levels.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in a news conference Thursday said state officials must be involved in the investigation, which he described as “reckless.”
The BCA have “non-partisan career professionals that have spent years building the trust of the community,” he said.
“I will continue to press that we be part of the investigation, that we do the investigation, so that Minnesotans can trust what the outcome is.”
Walz said he believes it will be “very difficult” to receive a fair outcome with federal agencies handling the investigation.
He described Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as “judge, jury and executioner.”
“And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment. From the president to the vice president, to Kristi Noem, have stood and told you things that are verifiably false, verifiably inaccurate.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called on federal officials to reverse the decision to exclude the Force Investigations Unit from the probe.
“What I have seen is deeply disturbing and there is sufficient basis for further investigation and potential charges,” he said in an appearance on CNN. “There’s basis to move forward. There’s basis to, at some point, present it to a prosecuting authority to make it to charging.
“My question is, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of an independent investigation for?”
The shooting took place in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning as a convoy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles made their way through the city. Video from the scene appeared to show an SUV blocking the convoy’s way.
ICE accused Renee Nicole Good, the driver of the SUV, of attempting to use her SUV to run over an ICE officer, who fired two shots at her, one of which struck her in the head and killed her. The agency said she used her vehicle as a weapon to carry out an act of terrorism.
“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,” a statement from ICE released Wednesday said.
A senior official with the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that the officer who shot Good had worked for ICE for 10 years. He worked specifically with the Enforcement and Removal Operations branch.
Local officials have called into question the narrative that Good was carrying out an act of terrorism. They believe Good had been attempting to drive away from the scene as an ICE agent reached into her vehicle and tried to open the door, and another stepped in front of it.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey it didn’t appear as if Good was using her vehicle as a weapon. He blamed ICE’s presence in Minneapolis for the deadly incident and said it should not have happened.
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense,” he said. “I wanna tell everybody directly, that is [expletive.]
“They are not here to cause safety in this city,” Frey said of federal immigration efforts. “What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust.”
An eyewitness of the incident, identified only as Betsy, told Minnesota Public Radio that Good “posed absolutely no threat to any of these agents.”
She said she saw agents surrounding the SUV in the along with a “cluster of vehicles in the street.”
“He was a man wearing a black bulletproof vest, and he was kind of yelling at the driver of the maroon SUV. She appeared to me to be trying to move her vehicle south on Portland Avenue to kind of get out of the way of the activity that was happening, and the officer was on the driver’s side of the car, like near the driver’s window.
“He was yelling at her, and she started to accelerate her vehicle to kind of go south on Portland, he reached his arm into the driver’s side of the car and fired multiple shots.”
She said bystanders attempted to provide medical aid to Good but officers told them to stay away.
Protests over the deployment of federal immigration officials to Minneapolis also took place Thursday outside the Whipple Federal Building as demonstrators decried the killing of Good, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. A line of immigration officials surrounded the building and arrested multiple people accused of putting their hands on officials. Officers also fired pepper balls into the crowd to disperse demonstrators, Fox News reported.
ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, told Fox News on Thursday that the agency “took a pause” in its operations after Wednesday’s shooting, but it’s now “back to doing our law enforcement mission.” He called on the public not to interfere with law enforcement operations.
Noem said in a news conference in New York City that she’s “not opposed to sending more” immigration officials to Minneapolis “if necessary, to keep people safe.”
Minneapolis Public Schools on Wednesday canceled all classes Thursday and Friday “due to safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city.”
The BCA Force Investigations Unit was created in 2020 amid a wave of unrest in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the country over the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans.
