Fear and anger spread after another immigration shooting in Minneapolis

A fed­er­al of­fi­cer shot a man in the leg in Min­neapo­lis af­ter be­ing at­tacked with a shov­el and broom han­dle, fur­ther height­en­ing the sense of fear and anger ra­di­at­ing across the city a week af­ter an im­mi­gra­tion agent fa­tal­ly shot a woman in the head.

Smoke filled the street Wednes­day night near the site of the lat­est shoot­ing as fed­er­al of­fi­cers wear­ing gas masks and hel­mets fired tear gas in­to a small crowd while pro­test­ers threw rocks and shot fire­works. Min­neapo­lis Po­lice Chief Bri­an O’Hara said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence that the gath­er­ing was an un­law­ful as­sem­bly and “peo­ple need to leave.”

Things lat­er be­gan to qui­et down at the scene, and by ear­ly Thurs­day few­er demon­stra­tors and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers were there.

Such protest scenes have be­come com­mon on the streets of Min­neapo­lis since a fed­er­al agent fa­tal­ly shot Re­nee Good on Jan. 7 amid a mas­sive im­mi­gra­tion crack­down that has seen thou­sands of of­fi­cers sent in­to the Twin Cities. Agents have yanked peo­ple from cars and homes and been con­front­ed by an­gry by­standers who are de­mand­ing that of­fi­cers pack up and leave.

Min­neapo­lis May­or Ja­cob Frey de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as not “sus­tain­able.”

Frey de­scribed a fed­er­al force that is five times as big as the city’s 600-of­fi­cer po­lice force and has “in­vad­ed” the city, scar­ing and an­ger­ing res­i­dents, some of whom want the of­fi­cers to “fight ICE agents.” At the same time, the po­lice force is still re­spon­si­ble for their day-to-day work to keep the pub­lic safe.

The De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty says it has made more than 2,000 ar­rests in the state since ear­ly De­cem­ber and is vow­ing to not back down.

Shoot­ing fol­lowed chase

In a state­ment de­scrib­ing the events that led to Wednes­day’s shoot­ing, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said fed­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cers stopped a per­son from Venezuela who was in the U.S. il­le­gal­ly. The per­son drove away and crashed in­to a parked car be­fore tak­ing off on foot, DHS said.

Af­ter of­fi­cers reached the per­son, two oth­er peo­ple ar­rived from a near­by apart­ment and all three start­ed at­tack­ing the of­fi­cer, ac­cord­ing to DHS.

“Fear­ing for his life and safe­ty as he was be­ing am­bushed by three in­di­vid­u­als, the of­fi­cer fired a de­fen­sive shot to de­fend his life,” DHS said.

The two peo­ple who came out of the apart­ment are in cus­tody, it said.

O’Hara said the man shot was in the hos­pi­tal with a non-life-threat­en­ing in­jury.

The shoot­ing took place about 4.5 miles (7.2 kilo­me­ters) north of where Good was killed. O’Hara’s ac­count of what hap­pened large­ly echoed that of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Clash­es in court as well

Ear­li­er Wednes­day, a judge gave the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion time to re­spond to a re­quest to sus­pend its im­mi­gra­tion crack­down in Min­neso­ta, while the Pen­ta­gon looked for mil­i­tary lawyers to join what has be­come a chaot­ic law en­force­ment ef­fort in the state.

“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The tem­per­a­ture needs to be low­ered,” state As­sis­tant At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Bri­an Carter said dur­ing the first hear­ing in a law­suit filed by Min­neso­ta and the cities of Min­neapo­lis and St. Paul.

Lo­cal lead­ers say the gov­ern­ment is vi­o­lat­ing free speech and oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al rights with the surge of law en­force­ment. U.S. Dis­trict Judge Kather­ine Menen­dez gave the U.S. Jus­tice De­part­ment un­til Mon­day to file a re­sponse to a re­quest for a re­strain­ing or­der.

Jus­tice De­part­ment at­tor­ney An­drew War­den sug­gest­ed the ap­proach set by Menen­dez was ap­pro­pri­ate.

The judge is al­so han­dling a sep­a­rate law­suit chal­leng­ing the tac­tics used by Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment and oth­er fed­er­al of­fi­cers when they en­counter pro­test­ers and ob­servers. A de­ci­sion could be re­leased this week.

Dur­ing a tele­vised speech be­fore Wednes­day’s shoot­ing, Gov. Tim Walz de­scribed Min­neso­ta as be­ing in chaos, say­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in the state “de­fies be­lief.”

“Let’s be very, very clear, this long ago stopped be­ing a mat­ter of im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment,” he said. “In­stead, it’s a cam­paign of or­ga­nized bru­tal­i­ty against the peo­ple of Min­neso­ta by our own fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

Mil­i­tary lawyers may join the surge

CNN, cit­ing an email cir­cu­lat­ing in the mil­i­tary, says De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth is ask­ing the mil­i­tary branch­es to iden­ti­fy 40 lawyers known as judge ad­vo­cate gen­er­al of­fi­cers or JAGs, and 25 of them will serve as spe­cial as­sis­tant U.S. at­tor­neys in Min­neapo­lis.

Pen­ta­gon spokesper­son Kings­ley Wil­son ap­peared to con­firm the CNN re­port by post­ing it on X with a com­ment that the mil­i­tary “is proud to sup­port” the Jus­tice De­part­ment.

The Pen­ta­gon did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to emails from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press seek­ing more de­tails.

It’s the lat­est step by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to dis­patch mil­i­tary and civil­ian at­tor­neys to ar­eas where fed­er­al im­mi­gra­tion op­er­a­tions are tak­ing place. The Pen­ta­gon last week sent 20 lawyers to Mem­phis, U.S. At­tor­ney D. Michael Duna­vant said.

Mark Nevitt, an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law and a for­mer Navy JAG, said there’s con­cern that the as­sign­ments are tak­ing lawyers away from the mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem.

“There are not many JAGs but there are over one mil­lion mem­bers of the mil­i­tary, and they all need le­gal sup­port,” he said.

An of­fi­cial says the agent who killed Good was in­jured

Jonathan Ross, the Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment of­fi­cer who killed Good, suf­fered in­ter­nal bleed­ing to his tor­so dur­ing the en­counter, a Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

The of­fi­cial spoke to AP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty in or­der to dis­cuss Ross’ med­ical con­di­tion. The of­fi­cial did not pro­vide de­tails about the sever­i­ty of the in­juries, and the agency did not re­spond to ques­tions about the ex­tent of the bleed­ing, ex­act­ly how he suf­fered the in­jury, when it was di­ag­nosed or his med­ical treat­ment.

There are many caus­es of in­ter­nal bleed­ing, and they vary in sever­i­ty from bruis­ing to sig­nif­i­cant blood loss. Video from the scene showed Ross and oth­er of­fi­cers walk­ing with­out ob­vi­ous dif­fi­cul­ty af­ter Good was shot and her Hon­da Pi­lot crashed in­to oth­er ve­hi­cles.

She was killed af­ter three ICE of­fi­cers sur­round­ed her SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from her home.

By­stander video shows one of­fi­cer or­der­ing Good to open the door and grab­bing the han­dle. As the ve­hi­cle be­gins to move for­ward, Ross, stand­ing in front, rais­es his weapon and fires at least three shots at close range. He steps back as the SUV ad­vances and turns.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem has said Ross was struck by the ve­hi­cle and that Good was us­ing her SUV as a weapon — a self-de­fense claim that has been deeply crit­i­cized by Min­neso­ta of­fi­cials.

Chris Madel, an at­tor­ney for Ross, de­clined to com­ment on any in­juries.

Good’s fam­i­ly, mean­while, has hired a law firm, Ro­manuc­ci & Blandin, that rep­re­sent­ed George Floyd’s fam­i­ly in a $27 mil­lion set­tle­ment with Min­neapo­lis. Floyd, who was Black, died af­ter a white po­lice of­fi­cer pinned his neck to the ground in the street in May 2020.

The firm said it would con­duct its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pub­licly share what it learns.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Julie Wat­son in San Diego, Re­bec­ca San­tana in Wash­ing­ton, Ed White in De­troit, Gio­van­na Dell’Or­to in Min­neapo­lis and Gra­ham Lee Brew­er in Ok­la­homa City con­tributed.

By STEVE KARNOWS­KI, ALAN­NA DURKIN RICH­ER and HAL­LIE GOLD­EN

MIN­NEAPO­LIS (AP)