Renee Nicole Good: Minneapolis on edge after fatal shooting of woman by ICE officer

Minneapolis remains on edge a day after a US immigration agent fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in an incident that drew immediate condemnation from city and state officials ‍who blamed President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement surge for sowing chaos in the city’s streets.

About 1000 demonstrators gathered on Thursday morning at a federal building where an immigration court is housed, chanting “shame” and “murder” at armed and masked federal officers, some of whom used tear gas and pepper balls on protesters.

Minnesota and US administration officials offered starkly different accounts of the shooting, in which an unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot US citizen Renee Nicole Good in a residential neighbourhood.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said on Thursday it had initially agreed with the FBI to ⁠conduct a joint investigation into the shooting but that the federal agency had “reversed course” and taken sole control over the probe.

“As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation,” Mr Evans said.

Keith Ellison, the state’s Democratic attorney general, told CNN the FBI’s decision was “deeply disturbing” and said state authorities could investigate with or without the co-operation of the federal government.

He added that the evidence he has seen, including some that has not yet been made public, indicates that state charges are a possibility.

The FBI and the office of US Attorney Daniel Rosen, the chief federal prosecutor in Minneapolis, did not immediately respond to questions about the BCA statement.

The agent was among 2000 federal officers that Trump’s administration had announced it was deploying to the Minneapolis area in what the Department of Homeland Security described as the “largest DHS operation ever”.

DHS officials, including Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, defended the shooting as self-defence and accused the woman of trying to ram agents in ‍an act of “domestic terrorism”.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, dismissed the assertion based on bystander videos taken of the incident that appeared to contradict the US government’s account.

Videos showed two masked officers approaching Ms Good’s car, which was stopped at a perpendicular angle on a Minneapolis street.

As one officer ordered Ms Good out of the car and grabbed at her door handle, the car briefly reversed and then began driving forward, turning to the right in an apparent attempt to leave the scene.

A third officer, positioned in front of her car on the left, drew his gun and fired three times while jumping back, with the last shots aimed through the driver’s window after the car’s bumper appeared to have cleared his body.

The video did not appear to show contact and the officer stayed on his feet although Ms Noem said he was taken to a hospital and released.

Minnesota law allows the use of deadly force by an officer only ‌if an objectively reasonable officer would believe that doing so was necessary to protect the officer or others from immediate death or serious harm.

Federal law has a similar standard.