The fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis has raised questions about the agency’s use of force.
On Wednesday, Renee Good, a mother of three, was shot and killed in an SUV in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis. Defenders of the officer’s actions, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Nom, have said the woman “armed” her vehicle and aimed it at the officer and fired in self-defense.
Some rejected that argument, like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who called the self-defense argument “bullying.”
Other politicians, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have labeled the shot as such. Murder.
A woman was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on a major U.S. city. Host Ian Hanomansing breaks down the footage.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, federal U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people in a vehicle outside a hospital in Portland. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said during an afternoon “targeted vehicle stop” that agents identified themselves with the occupants and the driver attempted to run them over.
ICE officers, who fall under the jurisdiction of DHS, are responsible for enforcing immigration laws, which means they have the authority to arrest individuals and may use force to do so if arrest is resisted. But they are bound by federal guidelines on when they can use such power.
Guidelines have been updated following Floyd’s murder
In the year Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, current US President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring all federal law enforcement agencies to meet or improve the standards set out in the Department of Justice.
That DOJ policy Deadly force can be used “only when necessary” and when the officer has a “reasonable belief” that the subject has placed them or others in “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.”
It also states that officers cannot discharge their firearms solely to disable moving vehicles. However, there are two caveats.
For example, an officer may do so if the person in the vehicle is threatening them or another person with some other means of deadly force, such as a gun. The officer may shoot if the vehicle is moving in a manner that causes death or serious injury to them or others.
However, the directive states that such force should be used “only when other reasonable and reasonable means of defense are considered, which includes leaving the vehicle’s path.”
John P. Gross, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said ICE’s rules of engagement are based on both officer and public safety.
“Because if you shoot at the vehicle and hit the driver – is the car going to stop?” said Gross, who has written extensively about police use of force.
“You disable the driver of the vehicle, and now you have a car on the road… That’s not a good solution to the problem.”
In the case of the ISA shooting in Minneapolis, the car continued down the road until it crashed into a parked car after the driver was shot.
‘as a last resort’
Gross said that while the DOJ manual allows an officer to shoot into a vehicle in self-defense, “it says you should do it as a last resort.”
DHS, for its part, has its own policies regarding the use of force. According to a memo that updates the policy in 2023, officers cannot discharge their firearms to disable vehicles or shoot their operators, unless deadly force is justified by the standard.
In particular, DHS policy lacks the same level of detail about what to do in the face of legal threats, Udi Ofer, founding director of Princeton University’s Policy Advocacy Clinic, wrote in X. It also doesn’t specify options to try first, such as off-roading.
Minnesota investigators said they found no evidence in the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman after the FBI took over the case, and Gov. Tim Walz criticized the Trump administration for suspending the case, saying it would be “very, very difficult to get a just outcome.”
But before deadly force is used in these situations, the officer must consider “the potential danger to law enforcement and innocents” from an out-of-control vehicle.
Gross said the memo appears to provide less specific guidance on shooting at vehicles, but the language is consistent in considering the danger posed by an out-of-control person.
An ICE spokesperson said in an email to CBC News that officers are trained to use the least amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize safety.
Officers also receive ongoing force training, and the current use-of-force policy is the same as the one in place under the Biden administration in 2023, he said.
David Weinstein, a Miami-based attorney and former U.S. attorney, said the use of deadly force in Minneapolis comes down to whether the officer had a reasonable belief that his life was in danger.
“The question becomes, she was about to pull him out, and so a large motor vehicle comes at you. And an officer can say, ‘That was deadly force, and that’s why I shot her,'” he said.
US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is aimed at criminal illegal immigrants, but many US citizens and legal immigrants are being deported. For National, CBC’s Terence McKenna talks to people pulled over by ICE agents and asks: Is America becoming a police state?
“It is not what a reasonable person believes, but what a reasonable officer in the same situation would believe.”
Emmanuel Mauleon, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, echoed that courts will decide whether deadly force is justified based on what he believes “a reasonable officer would have done given the facts at hand.”
“It’s not the officer’s objective belief,” he said. But they don’t want to second-guess the officers’ split-second decisions right now.
While White House officials say the agent’s life is in danger, other politicians and observers reject the self-defense argument, saying people may interpret these situations differently.
“So I think that kind of dispute is going to be brought before a jury and it’s going to be decided on a factual question in that situation.”