Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that Minnesota’s elected leaders have “lost credibility” and called on them to “turn down their rhetoric” after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis.
Ms. Noem also defended the administration’s decision to label Renee Nicole Good a domestic terrorist, arguing that she had weaponized her vehicle against the agent in Wednesday’s incident.
Ms. Noem also said the Department of Justice is following standard protocol in its investigation of the shooting and suggested the agency has been hesitant to work with local and state officials — including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats — because of their response and their prior reluctance to help the administration carry out its immigration crackdown.
“I would say that these locals, if you look at what Governor Walz has said, if you look at what Mayor Brian has said, they’ve extremely politicized and inappropriately talked about the situation on the ground,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It has inflamed the public.”
“They’ve encouraged the kind of destruction and violence that we’ve seen in Minneapolis the last several days, and that would encourage them to grow up, give some maturity, act like people who are responsible, who want people to be safe and the right thing be done,” Ms. Noem said. “When you use the kind of language that you use against law enforcement officers, they lose their credibility.”
Ms. Good’s death, captured in stark, jolting video footage, has become a Rorschach test for a divided country: To Trump critics, the video shows a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer gunning down a defenseless woman. To Trump supporters, Ms. Good came within inches of running over the agent.
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Ms. Noem said the facts are clear. “The vehicle was weaponized and it attacked the law enforcement officer,” she said. “He defended himself and he defended those individuals around him.”
“That is an act of domestic terrorism,” the Homeland Security chief added.
Mr. Frey scoffed at her take, saying he had said the federal agent’s reckless use of power led to Ms. Good’s death because “it’s exactly what happened.”
“I mean, am I biased in this? Of course, I’m biased because I got two eyes,” Mr. Frey said on CNN. “Anybody can see these videos. Anybody can see that this victim is not a domestic terrorist.”
The shooting of the 37‑year‑old mother of three occurred just after the Trump administration sent 2,000 federal officers into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, home to the nation’s largest Somali community.
Mr. Trump has hammered Minnesota’s leaders for months and recently has focused on a sweeping fraud case in which several Somali Americans were charged with stealing taxpayer money meant for child care programs.
Ms. Good’s death has sparked protests across the country — including in Minneapolis, where demonstrators have hurled ice, snow and rocks at ICE officers.
Tensions between Democrat‑run states and cities and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement had been simmering for some time. They began to boil over in the summer, when Mr. Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to protests over his immigration crackdown.
In the months that followed, he sought to federalize Guard units in Portland and Chicago, though those efforts were largely stalled in court after local officials challenged them.
The president also sent troops into the streets of the District of Columbia, Memphis and New Orleans — moves that Republican leaders in Tennessee and Louisiana have greeted warmly.
Mr. Trump has framed his immigration crackdown as part of a broader tough‑on‑crime agenda that he says is needed to keep the country safe, particularly in places where he argues that Democratic officials have ignored the threat of illegal immigration and refused to cooperate with federal authorities.
Democrats, meanwhile, have been racking up wins in court. Those setbacks prompted Mr. Trump to announce that he was stepping back — at least for now — from plans to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.
