Hundreds more federal officers are set to be deployed to Minnesota amid protests across the US after a woman was killed during an ICE operation in Minneapolis.
Renee Good, 37, was shot dead in her car in the city last Wednesday by an officer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Trump administration said the shooting was an act of self-defence by the agent, suggesting the mother-of-three used her vehicle as a weapon to attack him.
This characterisation has been rejected by state and local officials and protesters, who say a bystander video showed Ms Good steered away from the officer.
“We’re sending more officers today and tomorrow, they’ll arrive,” Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News.
“There will be hundreds more, in order to allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely.”
She said the officers deployed to Minneapolis would not just focus on finding immigration law breaches, but also on tackling people protesting against ICE.
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“We’re going to continue to if they conduct violent activities against law enforcement, if they impede our operations, that’s a crime, and we will hold them accountable to those consequences,” Ms Noem added.
The deployment comes in addition to the agents who arrived in Minneapolis last week in what Homeland Security has called its largest operation ever.
About 2,000 ICE officers – more than three times the number of officers in the Minneapolis Police Department – have already been sent to the area.
“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighbourhoods. They’ve definitely been out here,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city council member.
Minnesota sues Trump administration
Meanwhile, the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Monday to stop the ICE operation or limit it.
The lawsuit states that the enforcement surge in Minnesota violates federal law, alleging the state was being targeted over politics, which it says constitutes a violation of the First Amendment.
It also claims the ICE operation is arbitrary and capricious due to other states not seeing similar crackdowns.
The Trump administration says the crackdown is about fighting fraud, but the lawsuit says immigration enforcement officers have no expertise in fighting fraud in government programmes.
Read more:
Renee Good’s wife pays tribute to her
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It comes two days after thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis to demand an end to large-scale deployments of ICE agents after last week’s fatal shooting.
Hundreds of similar protests happened in towns and cities across the US over the weekend.
