The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed Wednesday night that an immigration agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan man in north Minneapolis after he fled a traffic stop.
The agency shared the information in a post on X about 8:51 p.m., saying that the agent feared for his life as he struggled with the man and two bystanders who reportedly tried to intervene. The man who was the government’s initial target suffered a non-life threatening wound to the leg. He and the federal agent are in the hospital, and the bystanders were arrested, according to DHS.
The shooting comes exactly a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Macklin Good in south Minneapolis.
Wednesday’s incident began with a traffic stop about 6:50 p.m. The shooting occurred in the 600 block of 24th Avenue N. More than 100 demonstrators gathered at different locations nearby, facing off with federal agents who deployed tear gas several times.
Noah Schumacher, who lives about five minutes away, responded to the scene. Schumacher, 33, said news of a second shooting was devastating.
“It’s important to be in the streets to confront these people who are invading our communities, who are terrorizing our communities,” he said.
Mayor Frey criticizes feds, Chief O’Hara calls demonstration ‘unlawful assembly’
At a late-night news conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey reiterated his call for ICE to leave the city, calling federal agents’ behavior “disgusting and intolerable.”
Frey said Wednesday’s shooting is further evidence that Trump’s goal in deploying more than 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis is to create chaos, not to ensure safety as the administration has claimed.
“We’re in a position right now where we have residents that are asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE agents on the street, to stand by their neighbors,” Frey told reporters. “We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another.”
Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who spoke at the same news conference, did not address federal agents’ behavior, but said that the shooting began with a chase on Interstate 94. O’Hara said the person federal agents were pursuing then drove to a north Minneapolis home, though it is unclear whether the man lived there.
A struggle ensued outside with federal law enforcement, then the man barricaded himself inside the home. Federal agents eventually went inside and detained him, O’Hara said.
He also debunked initial rumors on social media that more than one person had been injured, and that a boy was involved. Responding to claims from DHS that bystanders attacked a federal officer with a shovel and broom, O’Hara confirmed that police found a broom and a snow shovel at the scene, but said he did not know who allegedly used the items.
O’Hara said Minneapolis police’s role was to secure the crime scene so the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and FBI could process evidence for their investigation. When asked if his department would conduct its own investigation, O’Hara said he requested that BCA step in.
The chief called the gathering of protesters at the scene an “unlawful assembly,” and said fireworks that had been lit were thrown at police officers. He requested help from the Minnesota State Patrol and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office to disperse the crowd.
“The crowd is engaging in unlawful acts,” O’Hara said. “This is already a very tense situation, and we do not need this to escalate any further.”
Eyewitness accounts
Clayton Kelly, who lives nearby, said he watched as agents in an SUV with police lights chased another vehicle northbound on 6th Street before the vehicle being chased slid up onto a frozen embankment. Kelly said he saw a person run out of the car chased by agents on foot, then he heard multiple gunshots.
“They [the person from the vehicle being chased] went into a house, the duplex in the middle of the block… I heard two shots before the area was just being swarmed by ICE immediately,” he said.
Anusha Ramaswami lives nearby and stopped by the scene.
“I feel like these shootings are happening because Minneapolis and Minnesota are fighting back,” said Ramaswami, 29. “I feel like their [immigration agents’] desperation is showing. The more that people are resisting these abductions and attacks, the more desperate they’re getting. The more wild and blatantly illegal tactics they’re using on film, brazenly. It’s shocking.”
Keisha Foster, who lives around the corner from where the shooting occurred, said she went outside after hearing two gunshots. Law enforcement, observers and protesters began trickling onto her block.
“We shouldn’t have to come out here, especially when we got children, families that we love and need to attend to,” Foster said. “Shouldn’t nobody have to go through this sadness.”
As the crowd of neighbors and protesters swelled, an armored vehicle appeared on North 23rd Avenue and Lyndale Avenue North, but protesters blocked it from getting through to North 25th Avenue.
A protester broke the back windshield and taillight of an ICE vehicle that was departing. Federal agents set off round after round of flash-bang grenades and smoke bombs, and shot pepperballs and tear gas to push people back.
Foster’s cousin, Shawn Jackson, was visiting Foster’s home after his son’s basketball game when the shooting occurred. Jackson said he tried to leave as protesters clashed with ICE agents, but the agents deployed a flash-bang grenade and tear gas under his SUV while his six children were inside.
“I grabbed two kids at a time and was running in and out of the house,” Jackson said. “I barely could breathe. There was tear gas all over my car, like my car filled up with smoke.”
Jackson said two of his children, ages 2 and six months, were taken to the hospital after the younger one briefly had trouble breathing.
A back-and-forth between federal agents and the crowd continued until around 10 p.m. when State Patrol officers arrived on the scene and ICE agents began to exit.
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was on site and told Sahan Journal that he saw several federal officers and agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at the scene around 9:20 p.m.
The BCA investigates officer-involved shootings in Minnesota, but was pushed out of the Good investigation, which is being conducted by the FBI. State officials are launching an independent investigation into Good’s killing, but will not have access to evidence collected by federal investigators.
“It’s very clear that they’re not going anywhere, that these guys have kind of hunkered down,” Jaylani said of the federal agents at the scene.
DHS account
According to the DHS statement on X: Federal officers were making a traffic stop with a man they say is not a legal citizen. The man crashed into a parked car, fled on foot and resisted when an officer caught up with him.
The man allegedly struggled with an officer on the ground and assaulted the officer. Two bystanders exited a nearby apartment building and allegedly struck the officer with a shovel and broomstick, according to DHS. That’s when the officer shot the initial target of the traffic stop.
The man and bystanders ran into an apartment and barricaded themselves inside, but were eventually apprehended, DHS said.
Two shootings in one week
Wednesday’s shooting comes as the city continues reeling from Good’s killing, which made headlines around the world.
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was killed on Jan. 7 while monitoring federal immigration activity on Portland Avenue near E. 34th Street with her wife. Videos of the shooting show Good in the driver’s seat of an SUV that is parked at an angle in the roadway. She’s confronted by federal agents on foot, and attempts to make a three-point turn when officer Jonathan Ross fires multiple shots, killing her.
Good’s killing sparked continuous days of vigils, protests and marches that have often turned violent, with federal agents spraying chemical irritants in demonstrators’ faces, breaking car windows to detain civilians and making verbal threats against citizen observers.
Sahan Journal reporters Shubhanjana Das and Cynthia Tu contributed to this report.
