Trump Officials Cry ‘Domestic Terrorism’ After Videos Show ICE Agent Killing Woman

After a masked federal ICE agent shot and killed a Minneapolis woman on Wednesday, Trump administration officials began to blame her for her own death.

At least three videos have appeared online that purport to document the shooting.

In the videos, a maroon SUV reverses and then turns as three men appear to surround the car. One of them approaches and says, “get out of the fucking car,” as the car begins to reverse; another moves towards the front of the car. The car then appears to try to drive away from the scene. The agent who moved towards the car’s front lefthand corner then appears to fire at least three shots into the driver’s side as the car begins to accelerate towards the right.

Trump officials have instead described something that the videos do not appear to show. They, instead, said that an act of “domestic terrorism” took place in which a woman tried to ram federal agents as part of an attempted murder.  

“A woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said of a group of ICE officers that she described as having gotten stuck in the Minneapolis snow. Noem called the incident an “act of domestic terrorism.”

The dead driver has not been identified. Minneapolis officials described her as a 37-year old white woman. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called her a “legal observer.”

Outraged officials like Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Mayor Jacob Frey warned constituents not to give in to provocations and remain peaceful. Frey said he believed that claims that the ICE officer was acting in self-defense were “bullshit” and added that “this was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

In the hours after the shooting, Trump officials immediately cast the killed woman as having brought the shooting upon herself while trying to pour gasoline on the fire. 

DHS Press Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement after the killing in which she accused the woman of being a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots,” the statement reads.

In a Truth Social post, President Trump said that the woman “viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” Videos show him standing and walking around the area after the shooting. 

The statement bears little resemblance to the videos circulating on social media. The shooting appears to be the first high-profile death of an American citizen at the hands of federal agents in one of the Trump administration’s blitzes of American cities. They’ve involved flashy operations like mass deportation showman Greg Bovino’s helicopter raid against a south side Chicago apartment building, and have seen the deployment of the military to American cities. They’ve been violent, with federal agents deploying tear gas and brutalizing protestors. One woman in Chicago was shot multiple times by ICE but survived her injuries. 

But until Wednesday, they’ve largely gone without what many observers have warned was inevitable: a high-profile killing.

The Trump administration’s descriptions contradict what appears to happen on the video; it’s a separate question from whether tough legal standards around holding the officer criminally accountable might be met in this instance.

But it was Stephen Miller, the White House aide directing the administration’s joint deportation and domestic suppression campaign, who found a way to acknowledge a video from the scene while claiming that it was terrorism:

Minnesota officials said at a press conference later on Wednesday that the FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are conducting a joint investigation. Officials with the agency will review whether any state laws were violated.

Brian O’Hara, chief of the Minneapolis police, said at the conference that local officers responded to the scene after the shooting and took the woman to a hospital with a head wound, where she was pronounced dead.

After Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and others, Minneapolis is the latest largely blue city where the Trump administration has surged federal law enforcement agents as part of a national campaign to detain undocumented immigrants while intimidating protesters and other political opposition. Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol official in charge of these operations, was reportedly at the scene after the shooting.