MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Thousands of people marched in Minneapolis on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by a federal immigration officer there and the shooting of two people in Portland, Oregon. Minnesota leaders urged demonstrators to remain peaceful.
The protest was one of hundreds planned for towns and cities across the country over the weekend. It came in a city on edge since the killing of Renee Good on Wednesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
“We’re all living in fear right now,” said Meghan Moore, a mother of two from Minneapolis who joined the protest. “ICE is creating an environment where nobody feels safe and that’s unacceptable.”
On Friday night, a protest outside a Minneapolis hotel that attracted about 1,000 people turned violent as demonstrators threw ice, snow and rocks at officers, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. One officer suffered minor injuries after being struck with a piece of ice, O’Hara said. Twenty-nine people were cited and released, he said.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stressed that while most protests have been peaceful, those who cause damage to property or put others in danger will be arrested. He faulted “agitators that are trying to rile up large crowds.”
“This is what Donald Trump wants,” Frey said of the president who has demanded massive immigration enforcement efforts in several U.S. cities. “He wants us to take the bait.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz echoed the call for peace.
“Trump sent thousands of armed federal officers into our state, and it took just one day for them to kill someone,” Walz said on social media. “Now he wants nothing more than to see chaos distract from that horrific action. Don’t give him what he wants.”
“We will fight with peaceful expression, in court, through public debate, and at the ballot box. Keep the peace. And keep the faith,” Walz said later in another post.
Communities unite in frustration
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities is its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation. Trump’s administration has said both shootings were acts of self-defense against drivers who “weaponized” their vehicles to attack officers.
Connor Maloney said he was attending the Minneapolis protest to support his community and because he’s frustrated with the immigration crackdown.
“Almost daily I see them harassing people,” he said. “It’s just sickening that it’s happening in our community around us.”
He and other protesters, including children, braved subfreezing temperatures and a light dusting of snow, carrying handmade signs saying declaring, “De-ICE Minnesota!” and “ICE melts in Minnesota.”
They marched down a street that is home to restaurants and stores where various nationalities and cultures are celebrated in colorful murals.
Steven Eubanks, 51, said he felt compelled to attend a protest in Durham, North Carolina, because of the “horrifying” killing in Minneapolis.
“We can’t allow it,” Eubanks said. “We have to stand up.”
Indivisible, a social movement organization that formed to resist the Trump administration, said hundreds of protests were scheduled in Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and other states.
ICE activity across Minneapolis
In Minneapolis, a coalition of migrant rights groups organized the demonstration that began in a park about half a mile from the residential neighborhood where the 37-year-old Good was shot on Wednesday.
But the large protest apparently did not deter federal officers from operating in the city.
A couple of miles away, just as the demonstration began, an Associated Press photographer witnessed heavily armed officers — at least one in Border Patrol uniform — approach a person who had been following them. Two of the agents had long guns out when they ordered the person to stop following them, telling him it was his “first and final warning.”
The agents eventually drove onto the interstate without detaining the driver.
In Richfield, a suburb of Minneapolis, federal agents with their faces covered pointed their fingers at journalists and warned them to stay away as they detained a man outside a home improvement store.
Protests held in the neighborhood have been largely peaceful, and in general there has been minimal law enforcement presence, in contrast to the violence that hit Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Near the airport, some confrontations erupted on Thursday and Friday between smaller groups of protesters and officers guarding the federal building used as a base for the Twin Cities crackdown.
O’Hara said city police officers have responded to calls about cars abandoned because their drivers have been apprehended by immigration enforcement. In one case, a car was left in park and a dog was left inside another.
He said immigration enforcement activities are happening “all over the city” and that 911 callers have been alerting authorities to ICE activity, arrests and abandoned vehicles.
The Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal officers to Minnesota under a sweeping new crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. More than 2,000 officers were taking part.
Lawmakers snubbed
Three congresswomen from Minnesota attempted to tour the ICE facility in the Minneapolis federal building on in the morning and were initially allowed to enter but then told they had to leave about 10 minutes later.
U.S, Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig accused ICE agents of obstructing members of Congress from fulfilling their duty to oversee operations there.
A federal judge last month temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing policies that limit congressional visits to immigration facilities. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by 12 members of Congress who sued in Washington, D.C. to challenge ICE’s amended visitor policies after they were denied entry to detention facilities.
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This story has been updated to correct that the people shot in Portland were not protesters.
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Associated Press writers Allen Breed in Durham, North Carolina, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed.