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 was wounded in the leg. He and the federal agent are in the hospital, according to DHS.
The incident began with a traffic stop about 6:50 p.m. The shooting occurred in the 600 block of 24th Avenue North. Sahan Journal staffers at the scene report that more than 100 demonstrators have gathered at different locations nearby, facing off with federal agents who deployed tear gas at times.
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 SUV slid up onto a frozen embankment. Kelly said he saw at least one person run out of the car and agents chased them 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, and I don’t know if it was one or two people, but I heard two shots before the area was just being swarmed by ICE immediately,” he said.
Keisha Foster, who lives around the corner from where the shooting apparently took place, said she heard two gunshots and came outside. That was when law enforcement, as well observers and protesters, began to trickle 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.”
Miriam Lema, 19, lives a few blocks away from where the shooting happened. Neighbors in a WhatsApp group saw the shooting and ran to the scene.
With tears in her eyes, Lema said she wanted to see what happened and yell at ICE officers because they’ve been terrorizing her neighborhood.
As a crowd of neighbors and protesters swelled, an armored vehicle appeared on 23rd Street North and Lyndale Avenue, but protesters blocked it from getting through to 25th Street.
A protester broke the back windshield and taillight of an ICE vehicle that was departing.
Earlier in the evening, the official city of Minneapolis X account reported that city officials are “aware of reports of a shooting involving federal law enforcement,” but no other information was immediately available.
The social media post from 7:44 p.m. said the city is working to confirm details.
The incident comes exactly a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Macklin Good in south Minneapolis.
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. 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.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
