Minneapolis, MN
Fatal ICE shooting sparks jurisdiction clash between state and federal authorities
A day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, the case escalated sharply Thursday when federal authorities blocked state investigators from accessing evidence and declared that Minnesota has no jurisdiction to investigate the killing.
Legal experts said the dispute highlights a central question raised repeatedly as federal agents are deployed into cities for immigration enforcement: whether a federal officer carrying out a federally authorized operation can be criminally investigated or charged under state law.
The FBI told Minnesota law enforcement officials they would not be allowed to participate in the investigation or review key evidence in the shooting, which killed 37-year-old Renee Good on Wednesday. Local prosecutors said they were evaluating their legal options as federal authorities asserted control over the case.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged federal officials to reconsider, saying early public statements by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal leaders defending the agent risked undermining confidence in the investigation’s fairness.
Experts say there’s narrow precedent for state charges. And sometimes attempts at those charges have been cut short by claims of immunity under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which protects federal workers performing federally sanctioned, job-related duties. But that immunity isn’t a blanket protection for all conduct, legal experts said.
What is the standard for immunity?
If charges are brought, the federal agent is likely to argue he is immune from state prosecution under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“The legal standard basically is that a federal officer is immune from state prosecution if their actions were authorized by federal law and necessary and proper to fulfilling their duties,” said Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Yablon, who is the faculty co-director of the school’s State Democracy Research Initiative, said state prosecutors would have to consider both state and federal laws to overcome the hurdles of immunity. They would first need to show a violation of state statutes to bring charges, but also that the use of force was unconstitutionally excessive under federal law.
“If the actions violated the Fourth Amendment, you can’t say those actions were exercised under federal law,” he said, referring to the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
Hurdles to state charges
The whole endeavor is made more complicated if there is not cooperation between federal and state authorities to investigate the shooting.
Walz said federal authorities rescinded a cooperation agreement with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and he urged them to reverse course, warning that Minnesotans were losing confidence in the investigation’s independence. Noem confirmed the decision, saying: “They have not been cut out; they don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”
State officials have been vocal about finding a way to continue their own parallel investigation.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said during an interview on CNN that the move by federal authorities to not allow state participation does not mean state officials can’t conduct their own investigation.
But local officials in Hennepin County said they’d be in the dark if the FBI chose not to share their findings. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement that her office is “exploring all options to ensure a state level investigation can continue.”
“If the FBI is the sole investigative agency, the state will not receive the investigative findings, and our community may never learn about its contents,” she said.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche defended federal agents’ use of force, saying Thursday that officers often must make split-second decisions in dangerous and chaotic situations. In a statement posted on social media, Blanche said the law does not require officers “to gamble with their lives in the face of a serious threat of harm,” and added that standard protocols ensure evidence is collected and preserved following officer-involved shootings.
In many cases involving use-of-force, investigators examine how the specific officer was trained, if they followed their training or if they acted against standard protocol in the situation. It’s unclear if state investigators will be granted access to training records and standards or even interviews with other federal agents at the scene Wednesday, if they continue a separate investigation.
During the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd, prosecutors called one of the department’s training officers to testify that Chauvin acted against department training.
Precedents and other legal issues
Samantha Trepel, the Rule of Law program director at States United Democracy Center and a former prosecutor with the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote a guest article for Just Security Wednesday in the wake of the fatal shooting. The piece focused on the Department of Justice silence in the face of violent tactics being used in immigration enforcement efforts.
Trepel, who participated in the prosecution of officers involved in Floyd’s death, told AP Thursday that the current DOJ lacks the independence of previous administrations.
“In previous administrations, DOJ conducted independent and thorough investigations of alleged federal officers’ excessive force. Even though the feds were investigating feds, they had a track record of doing this work credibly,” Trepel said. “This included bringing in expert investigators and civil rights prosecutors from Washington who didn’t have close relationships and community ties with the individuals they were investigating.”
Trepel said in a standard federal investigation of alleged unlawful lethal force, the FBI and DOJ would conduct a thorough investigation interviewing witnesses, collecting video, reviewing policies and training, before determining whether an agent committed a prosecutable federal crime.
“I hope it’s happening now, but we have little visibility,” she said. “The administration can conduct immigration enforcement humanely and without these brutal tactics and chaos. They can arrest people who have broken the law and keep the public safe without sacrificing who we are as Americans.”
Questions about medical aid after the shooting
In other high-profile fatal police shootings, officers have faced administrative discipline for failing to provide or promptly secure medical aid after using force.
Video circulating from Wednesday’s shooting shows a man approaching officers and identifying himself as a physician, asking whether he could check Good’s pulse and provide aid. An agent tells him to step back, says emergency medics are on the way, and warns him that he could be arrested if he does not comply.
Witness video later showed medics unable to reach the scene in their vehicle, and people carrying Good away. Authorities have not said whether actions taken after the shooting, including efforts to provide medical assistance, will be reviewed as part of the federal investigation.
In other cases, including the 2023 death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, failures to render medical aid were cited among the reasons officers were fired and later charged.
Big Honking Truck Parade heads to Minneapolis
A ?cavalcade of wheels? will line Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis on Thursday, July 31, for the first-ever ?Minneapolis Moves: The Big Honking Truck Parade? featuring vehicles from fire engines to snowplows.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Families can get up close to massive trucks and city vehicles as the Big Honking Truck Parade rolls back through Minneapolis on Thursday.
Big trucks take over Nicollet Mall
What we know:
The “Minneapolis Moves: The Big Honking Truck Parade” is set to line downtown with municipal, public safety, construction and big-wheel trucks in an effort to bring families together and highlight the people and equipment that keep the city running.
The event begins at 5 p.m. with a local vendor market featuring crafts and food. A parade then starts at 5:30 p.m., traveling down Nicollet Mall from East Grant Street to South Sixth Street.
Mayor Frey during the 2025 Big Honking Truck Parade. Credit: City of Minneapolis (Supplied)
Dig deeper:
The parade is said to feature City of Minneapolis cars, police and fire trucks, construction vehicles, semitrailers and more from local businesses and operators.
Two Minnesota Special Olympics athletes, Dequan Williams of Minneapolis and Niko Lichtscheidl of St. Francis will serve as grand marshals of the parade, ahead of the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games which officially kick off in Minnesota on Saturday.
After the parade, all vehicles will be parked along the Mall until 8 p.m. for a “touch-a-truck” experience, giving families a chance to explore the trucks up close.
According to officials, the parade route will:
- Begin at East Grant Street
- Travel down Nicollet Mall
- End at South Sixth Street
Hoping to expand upon its first year in 2025, the parade is said to feature City of Minneapolis cars, police and fire trucks, construction vehicles, semitrailers and more from local businesses and operators.
What they’re saying:
“The Big Honkin’ Truck Parade is one of those uniquely Minneapolis events that brings families together while showcasing the people and equipment that serve our city every day,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a press release. “It’s fun, it’s educational, and it’s a great reminder of all the work happening behind the scenes to keep Minneapolis running.”
The Source: Information provided by a City of Minneapolis press release.
Minneapolis, MN
ICE’s Unseen Toll in Minneapolis: Suicide Helpline Calls More Than Doubled During Surge
More than six months after federal agents descended on Minnesota, the toll of the immigration crackdown on the Twin Cities continues to mount.
The latest revelations about the far-reaching and deeply felt impacts of the campaign known as Operation Metro Surge come in a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday.
Based on more than 130 interviews, video analysis, and government arrest data, the report documents a dizzying array of abuses over the multi-month siege of Minneapolis and St. Paul — from lethal violence to free speech violations, unlawful detentions, and more.
While many of the abuses are well-known — including the killings of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents — others occurred in the shadows of the infamous campaign.
Among the most troubling accounts are those provided by healthcare and mental health professionals.
According to the report, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Minnesota saw a 120 percent increase in calls and a “significant increase” in the number of people struggling with suicidal thoughts or actions during Metro Surge. One medical provider knew of at least three teenagers who attempted to take their own life after their parents were detained in the crackdown, with one of the adolescents doing so on a “frequent” basis.
“One goal of the report is to bring light back to the full scope of the harm, and not only the harm that we saw in terms of violence in the streets, in terms of abusive detentions,” Reagan Williams, the author of the new report, told The Intercept, “but also the effects that that had for aspects of daily life for everybody here — the impact it had on people’s ability to leave their homes, to go to doctor, to go to school, to go to work.”
Human Rights Watch found the combination of violence and racial profiling that defined the crackdown caused many Minnesotans to forgo medical care.
The day after Good was killed, nearly a third of one healthcare provider’s patients — mostly Somali or Spanish-speaking immigrants — did not show up for pre-scheduled appointments. Another provider said the number of in-person visits at their office dropped by as much as 50 percent.
When Williams arrived in the Twin Cities, her focus was the kind of violent interactions documented in viral videos proliferating from Minnesota. She soon learned those weren’t the only issues community members were desperate to discuss.
“People that we talked with expressed emotions of exhaustion, fear, frustration, immense stress,” she said. “They expressed particular concerns for children, medical providers in particular, the impact of missing school, of knowing violence is happening in their communities — for immigrant children and children of color, the fear of having a parent taken, of themselves being taken.”
“Children are particularly vulnerable to long-term impacts of this kind of acute violence and stress,” Williams added. “Those are impacts that will continue on.”
“Near-Total Impunity”
Described by Trump administration officials as the largest immigration enforcement operation in history, the crackdown in the Twin Cities began in December and stretched into February. Thousands of officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol conducted roving arrest operations throughout the area.
More than 4,000 immigrants were arrested during Metro Surge. At roughly 100 arrests per day, it was the highest per capita arrest rate in the country; 64 percent of immigrants arrested in the campaign had no criminal record.
“In Minnesota, US citizens and immigrants alike were racially profiled in the ordinary course of their day — approached by federal agents while driving, while at work, or while shoveling snow,” the report said. “Minnesota residents of Somali and Latin American descent were notably targeted, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of these communities are US citizens or have green cards.”
A hotline run by the National Lawyers Guild recorded 524 cases of the U.S. citizens detained during the surge, though the figure is believed to be a significant undercount. A survey by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego earlier this year found that nearly a third of Minneapolis residents experienced an interaction with federal agents; of those interactions, nearly half occurred “at or near a school, healthcare facility, childcare facility, courthouse, or place of worship.”
The new report follows a fresh tally from Minneapolis officials, announced last week, estimating that Metro Surge cost the city nearly $700 million. A nonprofit serving tenants in Minnesota described the economic fallout as a “crisis,” the Human Rights Watch report said, with an 85 percent increase in people seeking rent payment assistance.
“If I told you every time ICE was near a school, you’d stop reading my messages.”
In one Minnesota school district, attendance dropped by nearly a third during the government operation. At least 14 incidents of immigration enforcement reported at or near campuses, including the arrest of a preschool teacher, a special education staff member, and a parent at a school bus stop.
“If I told you every time ICE was near a school,” the district’s superintendent told Human Rights Watch, “you’d stop reading my messages.”
Considering the sweeping impacts of the crackdown, Human Rights Watch is calling for an overhaul of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Border Patrol; congressional investigations into the actions of officials involved in the operation; legislation to prohibit immigration arrests at sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals; and a host of other reforms.
To date, the report said, “The many abuses committed by federal agencies during Operation Metro Surge have so far been met with near-total impunity.”
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