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A United States immigration officer has fatally shot a woman in her car in Minneapolis during an immigration raid. The shooting has spurred protests in the Minnesota city.

Local authorities and President Donald Trump’s administration have given different accounts of what happened during the incident.

Here is more about the victim and a closer look at what happened on Wednesday.

What happened during the Minneapolis ICE shooting?

A federal officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed a woman in her car.

Shortly after 9:30am (15:30 GMT), Minneapolis police responded to reports of gunshots, according to Mayor Jacob Frey.

Local officials said the woman was acting as a legal observer during protests against US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. 

Legal observers are usually volunteers who attend protests to monitor interactions between law enforcement and demonstrators, documenting any confrontations or potential legal violations.

Local news reports from across the US in February said immigration activists formed volunteer groups who observe their neighbourhoods to spot undercover ICE agents and vehicles and release social media warnings about these deployments to their neighbours.

“We have a variety of community responders on the ground watching ICE agents, helping families with rent, food, watching our neighbourhoods, making sure that we can keep our neighbourhoods safe and make sure that immigration enforcement isn’t splitting our families apart,” Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez told local media.

Videos of Wednesday’s incident show a masked ICE agent shoot three times towards an SUV. The car is then seen hurtling out of control and crashing into other parked cars.

Multiple angles of the videos filmed by various onlookers went viral on the internet. The onlookers sound terrified, shouting, “Shame!” at the agent and asking him to stop.

In some images and videos, the woman’s bloodied body is seen slumped in the SUV in the aftermath.

According to Frey, the victim was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where she died of her injuries.

The incident took place during protests against the ICE immigration crackdown in south Minneapolis.

Who was Renee Nicole Good, the woman named as the victim?

The Minneapolis City Council, the city’s primary legislative body, identified the victim as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

In a joint statement, Council President Elliot Payne and council members wrote: “Renee was a resident of our city who was out caring for her neighbors this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government. Anyone who kills someone in our city deserves to be arrested, investigated, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The statement demanded that ICE leave Minneapolis.

Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper that Good died a few blocks away from her home. “She was probably terrified,” Ganger said.

Ganger denied that her daughter was part of the protests against ICE.

“She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

The Star Tribune also quoted Good’s father-in-law, who said she had a six-year-old child with his son, Timmy Ray Macklin Jr. Macklin died in 2023 at the age of 36.

The newspaper reported that Good also had two other children.

She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University, a public university in Norfolk, Virginia. A brief English Department bio, which referred to her as Renee Macklin, described her as a Colorado Springs, Colorado, native who hosted a podcast with her husband, Tim Macklin, and said that when she wasn’t focused on writing, she enjoyed movie marathons and making “messy art”.

What has Trump said about the shooting?

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump said: “The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

He added that the reason “these incidents” are happening is because “the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.”

It is unclear from the footage whether Good tried to run over the agent. The footage shows her car reverse and then move forward. When the car moves forward, an agent is seen jumping ahead. However, it is not clear whether this was because of her car or what he was trying to do.

What have other Trump administration officials said?

Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said during a news conference that “any loss of life is a tragedy” but Good “had been stalking and impeding [ICE’s] work all throughout the day”.

“She then proceeded to weaponise her vehicle,” Noem said.

The DHS runs ICE, and last summer, it launched a major recruitment drive to hire 10,000 more ICE agents on top of the existing force of about 6,000.

On X, the DHS wrote that the ICE agent fired “defensive shots” at Good after she had tried to run over the agent.

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots,” it posted, calling the incident “an act of domestic terrorism”.

“I want every ICE officer to know that their president, vice president, and the entire administration stands behind them,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X.

“To the radicals assaulting them, doxxing them, and threatening them: congratulations, we’re going to work even harder to enforce the law.”

How have local authorities responded?

Authorities in Minnesota have disputed the Republican Trump administration’s accounts of the shooting.

Democratic Governor Tim Walz reposted the DHS X post on Wednesday, saying: “I’ve seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine. The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.”

Frey released a statement rebuking the actions of ICE.

“ICE – Get the f*** out of Minneapolis,” Frey said during a news conference on Wednesday. “We do not want you here. Your stated purpose for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, but you are doing exactly the opposite.”

“People are being hurt, families are being ripped apart, long-term Minneapolis residents who have contributed greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now, someone is dead. That’s on you. It’s also on you to leave. It’s on you to make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury is not done.”

What’s the Trump administration’s justification for ICE raids in Minneapolis?

On Tuesday, the Trump administration escalated its immigration operation in Minneapolis. In an X post, ICE announced it planned to deploy 2,000 additional agents to the northern Midwestern city.

“A 100% chance of ICE in the Twin Cities – our largest operation to date,” the post said.

The DHS launched Operation Metro Surge, which includes Minneapolis, in December. The Trump administration said the operation aims to root out criminals and undocumented immigrants.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, told local news media that ICE is “surging to Minneapolis to root out fraud, arrest perpetrators and remove criminal illegal aliens”.

The population of Minnesota is more than 5 million, and according to numbers from the Migration Policy Institute from 2023, the number of undocumented immigrants in the state is 100,000.

Republicans have made disparaging remarks particularly targeting the state’s Somali population.

Last month, the Trump administration froze childcare payments to the state in response to allegations by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, who claimed daycare centres operated by Somali Americans in the city of Minneapolis had committed up to $100m in fraud.

Where else has ICE led anti-immigration raids under Trump?

In September, ICE launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, Illinois, to arrest undocumented immigrants in the city. It is ongoing.

Last month, ICE launched a raid in Columbus, Ohio, which also has a large Somali population. In late November, ICE agents were deployed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Similar raids were launched in Charlotte, North Carolina that same month.

Russian mortality rates on the front lines are rising to levels that cannot be sustained by the current method of voluntary recruitment, Ukrainian figures suggest.

“In December, 35,000 occupiers were eliminated – and this has been confirmed with video footage,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Monday evening address. “In November, there were 30,000, and in October, 26,000 eliminated occupiers.”

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii echoed that analysis.

“The enemy lost over 33,000 personnel [in December]. This figure includes only confirmed video cases, but the actual losses of the occupiers are greater,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging service.

That, he said, made December 2025, “the first month when the unmanned systems units of the Ukrainian Defence Forces neutralised approximately as many servicemen of the occupying army as Russia conscripted in a month”.

Russia has kept regular conscripts out of its war in Ukraine, recruiting volunteers on a contract basis to fight in its “special military operation”.

On December 27, Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) chief Kyrylo Budanov told state broadcaster Suspilne that Russia had reached its quota of 403,000 recruits in 2025 – an average of 33,583 per month, and planned to increase that slightly to 34,083 per month in 2026.

Ukraine’s casualty reports, if accurate, suggest they are no longer sustainable and may force Russia to start using its active reserve.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, observed in November that forward reserve units in Belgorod had begun to receive heavy equipment such as howitzers, thermobaric weapons and all-terrain vehicles.

“Reserve territorial defence units assigned with protecting rear-area critical infrastructure do not require such heavy equipment suited for offensive operations,” the ISW said, adding “Russia is setting conditions to deploy Belgorod Oblast active reservists for combat missions.”

Analysts have said that deploying reservists or conscripts could carry significant political risk for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has left mainstream Russian society unscathed by his war of aggression.

Ukraine estimates that almost 420,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded last year.

Zelenskyy first noted the rising mortality rate of Russian troops on December 16.

“The increase in these figures is the result of the right decisions. There must be more decisions like these,” he said on Monday.

He was referring to the production of drones, which Ukraine successfully stepped up in 2025 and plans to increase this year.

This, he said, was the main reason why he appointed former First Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister on Friday.

Zelenskyy described Fedorov as “deeply involved in the issues related to the drone line and works very effectively on digitalising public services and processes”.

The president praised departing Defence Minister Denys Shmyal, whom he moved to the energy portfolio, for reaching the production target of 1,000 intercept drones per day by the end of last year.

Russia claims that Ukraine has its own recruitment problems.

“Ordinary Ukrainians are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the actions of the authorities due to the situation at the front,” said Russian commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov in a year-end report to Putin on December 18.

He said Ukrainian recruitment levels had dropped by half during 2025 to 14,000 in November, and that Ukraine’s prosecutors had opened a total of 160,000 cases against defectors since 2022.

Al Jazeera is unable to verify either Russian or Ukrainian claims.

Russia has not been without success in 2025.

Its average daily rate of advance was 13.24sq km (5.1sq miles) a day, compared with 9.87sq km (3.8sq miles) a day in 2024, said the ISW.

But a monthly breakdown showed an inconsistent pattern of land grabs, rather than a steady increase. Russia’s territorial gains still amounted to 0.8 percent of Ukraine, consisting of villages and fields.

New Russian tactics

Russia has said it aims to capture the rest of Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, three regions it has, on paper, annexed in their entirety.

To achieve this, Russia has been experimenting with new tactics, using drones to cut Ukrainian supply lines and creating a kill zone as deep as 15km (9 miles) behind the front line.

Russia introduced wired fibre-optic drones impervious to electronic jamming in 2025, and Syrskii credited these for Russia’s ability to capture the city of Siversk in Donetsk during the recent months.

“The Russians have followed our path and created separate drone systems units, which already number 80,000 military personnel,” wrote Syrskii. “In the second stage, in 2026, they plan to double their numbers to 165,500. And by 2030, they aim to reach almost 210,000.”

Russia also shifted tactics a few months ago, from large mechanised assaults that had resulted in huge losses of personnel and equipment, to infiltration tactics using several teams of two soldiers to establish bridgeheads and supply drops before reinforcements arrive.

These tactics enabled it to capture two-thirds of the hotly contested eastern town of Pokrovsk, in Donetsk, by the end of last year, and roughly half of neighbouring Myrnohrad.

Anticipating the further honing of these tactics, Ukraine has said it is improving the training of new troops.

“We clearly understand what we will have to face in the near future,” wrote Syrskii. “We have set the task of forming special units designed to effectively detect and destroy enemy high-tech drone units, control points, and the crews of the occupiers’ unmanned aerial systems.”

The long-range war

On Monday, the war claimed the first two civilian deaths of the year in Ukraine. A patient was killed when a Russian drone struck a hospital in Kyiv, and a second civilian was killed southwest of the capital.

On the same day, Russia struck heating and electricity plants in the northern city of Kharkiv.

During the first week of the year, Russia launched 789 drones and 10 missiles against Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine shot down 83 percent of the drones and one of the missiles.

Russia sharply increased its packages of long-range aerial attacks against Ukraine shortly after United States President Donald Trump won the November 2024 election.

During 2025, it launched 54,000 long-range attack drones and 1,900 missiles against Ukraine, said the ISW.

Russia introduced an innovation on Sunday, deploying Shahed drones with mounted Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) designed to shoot down drone-hunting aircraft, according to Ukrainian electronic and radio warfare expert Serhiy Beskrestnov.

“I ask the pilots of the army aviation to take note of the emergence of a new threat. They should avoid approaching the Shahed on a head-on course,” Beskrestnov said.

The information war

On December 29, Russia claimed Ukraine had attempted to strike Putin’s residence on the shores of Lake Valdai in Novgorod, and on January 1, its Ministry of Defence said flight data from a downed drone proved this.

The target audience appeared to be US President Donald Trump, whom Putin phoned to give him the news in person.

Despite initially declaring he believed the story was true, Trump on Sunday [January 4] told reporters on Air Force One, “I don’t believe that strike happened.”

On New Year’s Day, Russia claimed Ukraine had deliberately struck a bar in Kherson’s town of Khorly. Ukraine denied the attack.

“We are seeing the Kremlin spreading new falsified information to prepare Russian and foreign audiences for further escalation,” said Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service the following day.