Tuesday, January 13, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Scumbag-in-Chief Donald J. Trump Is Also A Vicious Misogynist and Uber-Pimp Who Uses His Utter Contempt For Women and Endless LIES To Hide, Excuse, and Maniacally Justify and Rationalize Any and All Crimes He Attempts to Provide Despicable Cover for and/Or Cowardly Defend–Including Murder…

Trump Has Another Justification for the Shooting of Renee Good: Disrespect

President Trump suggested that Renee Good’s “highly disrespectful” attitude toward law enforcement played a role in her fatal shooting by an ICE agent.

Listen to this article · 5:45 minutes

Learn more


PHOTO: Mr. Trump’s shifting remarks have raised questions about whether the administration will put any limits on the tactics ICE agents may use. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

by Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers
January 12, 2026
New York Times

[Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers are White House correspondents. They reported from Washington.]

President Trump has added another justification for the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minnesota: She behaved badly.

“At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.

In the days since Ms. Good, 37, was shot and killed by Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent, Trump administration officials have used a variety of arguments as they have tried to justify the episode. They have called it an act of self-defense, and Mr. Trump has falsely claimed Ms. Good “ran over” the agent. JD Vance, the vice president, has argued that Mr. Ross has “absolute immunity.”

While Mr. Trump still says the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing. The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Mr. Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.

Asked by a reporter if he believed deadly force was necessary in this case, Mr. Trump said: “It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.”

The federal government has defended the shooting as lawful and necessary, while local officials have dismissed that narrative. Mr. Trump referred to a “crunch” he heard in footage of the shooting to buttress his claim that the ICE agent was in danger.

“It seems like the big picture is to control the narrative and suggest to the public that she was in the wrong, and they were in the right,” said Barbara L. McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a law professor at the University of Michigan. “And also, I think, to send a message that the public needs to obey law enforcement on the streets, and to intimidate protesters.”

She added: “If people are afraid they’re going to be shot or arrested for observing or peacefully protesting, or even for mouthing off, I think the thought is that will cause people to self-censor or chill their behavior, cause them to stay home.”


PHOTO: People gathered to lay flowers at a makeshift memorial for Renee Good last week in Minneapolis. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, said that even if Mr. Trump’s allegation that Ms. Good was a “professional agitator” were true, that would not justify her killing.

“As far as I can tell, they’re not professional agitators,” Mr. Fox said. “She’s just a local woman who lived in the community. But it doesn’t really matter, right? You don’t get to kill someone because they engage in conduct that you disagree with or find distasteful or deplorable. If cops could just kill people any time they get annoyed or frustrated, my God, we would be in trouble.”

In the moments before the shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis, Ms. Good tells the agent that she isn’t mad at him, and Mr. Ross begins to circle her vehicle. She reverses as he crosses in front of her S.U.V., then she starts to move forward, and turns to the right. Mr. Ross is near her left headlight when he opens fire three times, killing her.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Ms. Good’s killing was one of 13 episodes in which federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July.

Aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump said ICE agents have faced their own hardships.

“These people have been harassed and threatened every day,” the president said. “They had bands out playing so they couldn’t sleep at the hotel. I see what they’re doing to them. They’re threatening them constantly.”

Like Mr. Trump, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended the actions of ICE on Monday, denigrating the protesters who oppose the agents’ actions.

“This administration will continue to stand wholeheartedly by the brave men and women of ICE, including that officer in Minneapolis who was absolutely justified in using self-defense against a lunatic who is part of a group, an organized group, to interject and to impede on law enforcement operations,” Ms. Leavitt said.

Vanita Gupta, a former associate attorney general who oversaw both the civil rights division that can prosecute federal agents and the civil division that can defend them, called the administration’s rush to disparage Ms. Good “unprecedented.”

“Being ‘disrespectful’ does not warrant the use of deadly force,” Ms. Gupta said. “The immediate public efforts by the White House to spin the facts, including denigrating the victim, does not change federal law.”

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, contrasted Mr. Trump’s treatment of Ms. Good with his praise and support for the hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and attacked the police.

On Jan. 6 this year, the Trump administration made a page on its website that accused the Capitol Police of instigating the riot, and said a pro-Trump rioter whom the police killed during the mayhem was “murdered.”

“Trump just pardoned nearly 1,600 insurrectionists,” Mr. Raskin said, “hundreds of whom violently attacked police officers and called them everything from traitors to pigs to racial epithets, and ruthlessly taunted them and maligned them for hours.” He added that “Donald Trump’s very dubious characterization of Renee Good as having been disrespectful is not only factually suspect, but it’s legally irrelevant.”

“The police do not have the right to shoot people in the head because they consider them having acted in a disrespectful way,” Mr. Raskin said. “That legal standard would have led to a slaughter on Jan. 6.”


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:


Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump\


More on the Minnesota ICE Shooting:


Posted by at

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Scumbag-in-Chief Donald J. Trump Is Nothing But A Vile White Supremacist Demagogue, Notorious Criminal, Sexual Predator, Pathological Liar, And Raging Psychopath--Always Was, Always Will Be

“...“It’s very simple,” said Mr. Trump, who has carved out exceptions to his crackdown on refugee admissions for mostly white South Africans. “I want people that love our country,” he said.

Carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was formed in 1965 under the Civil Rights Act. The commission’s chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a striking video message last month underlining the agency’s new posture.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Ms. Lucas said in the video posted on X. “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”

“The E.E.O.C. is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees,” she said.

In the video, Ms. Lucas pointed white men to the commission’s F.A.Q. on “D.E.I.-related discrimination,” which notes that D.E.I. “a broad term that is not defined” in the Civil Rights Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, and for decades has been a resource for minorities, women and other groups who have historically faced discrimination. But Ms. Lucas has endeavored to make it one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful tools against D.E.I., with a particular focus on remedying perceived harms against white men…”
—Erica Green, “Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’, New York Times, January 11. 2026 
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trump-interview-white-people-discrimination.html

Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’

President Trump’s comments were a blunt distillation of his administration’s racial politics, which rest on the belief that white people have become the real victims of discrimination in America.
 
Listen to this article · 5:41 minutes

Learn more


President Trump has equated diversity with incompetence and inferiority, and cast himself as the protector of white people both at home and abroad.Credit: Eric Lee for The New York Times

by Erica L. Green
January 11, 2026
New York Times 

[Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent. She reported from Washington.] 


President Trump said in an interview that he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being “very badly treated,” his strongest indication that the concept of “reverse discrimination” is driving his aggressive crusade against diversity policies.

Speaking to The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Trump echoed grievances amplified by Vice President JD Vance and other top officials who in recent weeks have urged white men to file federal complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

When asked whether protections that began in the 1960s, spurred by the passage of the Civil Rights Act, had resulted in discrimination against white men, Mr. Trump said he believed “a lot of people were very badly treated.”

“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” he said, an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions. “So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.”

He added: “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”

Mr. Trump’s comments were a blunt distillation of his administration’s racial politics, which rest on the belief that white people have become the real victims of discrimination in America. During his campaign for president, Mr. Trump harnessed a political backlash to the Black Lives Matter and other protests, saying there was “a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” and he joined his base in denouncing what he deemed to be “woke” policies.

The Trump administration has claimed that eradicating policies that promote diversity would shepherd in a “merit-based” society. But for civil rights leaders, Mr. Trump’s remarks showed that the perceived plight of white men was the true focus.

Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, said there was “no evidence that white men were discriminated against as a result of the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act, and efforts to rectify the long history of this country denying access to people based on race in every measurable category.”

Within hours of taking office, Mr. Trump ordered the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion offices that were responsible for addressing systemic discrimination against minorities and women, and last year he ordered federal agencies to halt enforcement of core tenets of the bedrock Civil Rights Act.


He has gone on to equate diversity with incompetence and inferiority, and cast himself as the protector of white people both at home and abroad. Asked on Wednesday whether his immigration agenda was aimed at making the country whiter, Mr. Trump said he wanted people “that love our country.”

“It’s very simple,” said Mr. Trump, who has carved out exceptions to his crackdown on refugee admissions for mostly white South Africans. “I want people that love our country,” he said.

Carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was formed in 1965 under the Civil Rights Act. The commission’s chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a striking video message last month underlining the agency’s new posture.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Ms. Lucas said in the video posted on X. “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”

“The E.E.O.C. is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees,” she said.

In the video, Ms. Lucas pointed white men to the commission’s F.A.Q. on “D.E.I.-related discrimination,” which notes that D.E.I. “a broad term that is not defined” in the Civil Rights Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, and for decades has been a resource for minorities, women and other groups who have historically faced discrimination. But Ms. Lucas has endeavored to make it one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful tools against D.E.I., with a particular focus on remedying perceived harms against white men.

PHOTO: Andrea Lucas, the chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in her office in Washington last month. Credit: Kevin Mohatt/Reuters

Ms. Lucas’s tweet was boosted by Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, and Mr. Vance, who shared the video in a series of tweets railing against D.E.I. last month.

The vice president also shared an essay that blamed diversity initiatives for depriving white men of opportunities. “A lot of people think ‘DEI’ is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at N.F.L. games,” Mr. Vance wrote last month on X. “In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”


Labor and civil rights lawyers said Ms. Lucas’s video was an escalation in the administration’s tactics to use civil rights laws to remedy what it sees as the disenfranchisement of white men, rather than to help groups that have historically faced discrimination.

“I’ve never seen, in the history of an agency, a blanket request to only one racial group and gender to contact the chair’s office directly to raise concerns about discrimination,” said Jenny R. Yang, a former chair of the commission. “That raises significant concerns.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

Posted by at

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Elie Mystal On ICE and the Real Meaning Of the Deadly Ongoing Crisis of State Sanctioned Violence in Minnesota, Portland, and Throughout the United States

"...Every authoritarian regime throughout history has employed a roving band of armed thugs who operate outside the law to enforce its strongman’s will. Caesar had his Praetorian Guard, Francios Duvalier had his Tonton Macoutes, Hitler had his Gestapo.

Donald Trump has ICE. ICE is functionally a paramilitary organization, armed and empowered to harass citizens, brutalize opposition, and murder people who get in their way. Like any paramilitary apparatus, its chief aim is to strike fear in the population. It does this not only through feats of violence, false imprisonment, and kidnapping but also by repeatedly showing us it can’t be held accountable for its actions. ICE agents can seemingly do anything they want, and no one is allowed to stop them: They know it, and they want us to know it.

When we look at the historical record, the horrifying reality of these thug paramilitaries is that they do not naturally melt away when the strongman is finally deposed. They stay on. They align themselves with the next strongman, or the strongman who wants to overthrow the republican government that deposed the previous strongman. The next guy in office tends to want to keep them around anyway, because having a terrorist apparatus able to operate outside the law is something that leaders of nations consistently find useful.

These paramilitaries can be dismantled, but only when the people demand it, over and over again, and refuse to support any politicians or regimes who would keep them in place. ICE can be stopped, but we do not elect people to power who actually want to stop ICE; we tend instead to elect people who want to “fund” ICE, control it, and use it for their own purposes. And that is why we fail.

ICE must be abolished, root and stem, by the next Democratic administration. As a stopgap, it must be defunded by the current collection of Democrats, should the party take power in the upcoming election. ICE is the one true litmus test for an incoming post-Trump administration. The Democrats will likely not be inclined to do this. Again, paramilitary thugs have their uses to leaders the world over, and Democrats are traditionally afraid of looking “weak” on immigration or actually dismantling the tools of the enemy. Democrats, if they’re going to do this, must be forced to do this, by the people whose support they seek."
--Elie Mystal,  "Abolish ICE or GTFO", The Nation,  January 9, 2026
 
 
FBI takes over case of ICE agent killing US woman and cuts Minnesota’s access to evidence
 
Minneapolis remains on edge, with several protests planned after shooting of Renee Nicole Good

People protest against the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters
 
8 January 2026 
 
The FBI has taken full control of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, it emerged on Thursday.
 
In a statement, the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said it was initially called upon to help investigate the shooting before federal officials “reversed course” and said the case would be “solely led by the FBI”. With its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence revoked, the BCA said it had to “reluctantly” withdraw from the investigation.
 
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction. “They have not been cut,” she said. “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”
 
But Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that “Minnesota must be part of this investigation. It feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome. And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment.”
 
Indeed, the reversal from federal law enforcement comes as the Trump administration continues to justify Wednesday’s deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her was acting in “self-defense”, alleging she had tried to run him over.
 
That narrative is at odds with video footage of the incident, which has been widely shared online. It shows Good reversing her car and letting at least one ICE vehicle pass before an officer tells her to get out of the car; she then tries to turn and drive away. An agent shoots her multiple times, remains on his feet and walks away apparently uninjured as her car crashes into a lamp-post and parked vehicle.
 
The agent was identified independently by the Guardian as Jonathan E Ross, a Minnesota resident and 10-year veteran of federal law enforcement. Noem continued on Thursday to defend the federal agent – whom she described as “an experienced officer” that was “following his training” – and said he had been treated in hospital after the incident. Both she and the vice-president noted that Ross had been injured in an incident six months ago when an undocumented immigrant resisted arrest in a vehicle.
 
Vance also defended the shooting, repeatedly claiming, baselessly, that Good was part of a “leftwing network” of people who are trying to “incite violence against our law enforcement officers”.
 
He told the White House press briefing without evidence that the young mother was “a victim of leftwing ideology” and had been “brainwashed”, and doubled down on the administration’s claim that the officer had acted in self-defense. Good, 37, was “dead because she tried to ram somebody with her car”, Vance said.
 
The deadly incident, which occurred less than a mile from the spot where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, escalated tensions that have been building for weeks in Minnesota amid ramped-up federal immigration enforcement operations and fraud investigations by the Trump administration.
 
Authorities in Minneapolis had canceled school classes across the city on Thursday amid safety concerns and rising political tension after the US citizen and mother of three was killed during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation the day before.
 

 
Dozens of clergy members from all faith backgrounds gathered with hundreds of people at the site of the shooting in south Minneapolis at noon to show that the city was unified in its response. “Renee Good stood for her neighbors. We now must stand for her,” said JaNaé Bates, a co-executive director of the interfaith group Isaiah.
 
The crowd chanted “ICE out now” throughout the event, against visible signs of the tragedy: red paint in the snow read “ICE kills”, and writing on the street called for ICE to leave.
 
But emotions remained high in the city, and across the US, as the basic facts of the incident remain the subject of fierce debate.
 
Ilhan Omar posted on social media Thursday morning that thousands of people had gathered to honor Good last night, and that “ICE needs to get out of Minneapolis”.
 
“We will never accept that a single federal agent can be judge, jury and executioner in our streets,” the Minnesota representative said.
 
Minneapolis residents hold vigil for woman fatally shot by ICE agent – video
 
Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, also made several appearances on television networks on Wednesday night calling for peaceful protests and doubling down on his comments at a press conference earlier in the day in which he called for ICE “to get the fuck out of Minneapolis”.
 
“People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now, somebody is dead,” Frey said.
He said the homeland security department was already “trying to spin this as an action of self-defense”, a claim he said was “bullshit”.
 
Some Republicans seized on Frey’s comments as incendiary, with Nancy Mace, a South Carolina representative, calling for the resignations of the mayor and Walz.
 
Despite local officials’ calls for federal law enforcement to leave the state, the New York Times reported on Thursday that the Trump administration will deploy more than 100 US Customs and Border Protection agents and officers to Minnesota following the fatal shooting of Good.
 
The agents will be redirected from operations in Chicago and New Orleans. The deployment is expected to last until Sunday, the newspaper reported, citing documents it obtained.
 
Noem also stated that ICE operations would continue in Minneapolis, which saw a surge of about 2,000 federal agents this week to target immigrant populations.
 
This story was amended on 8 January 2026 to correct the name of the ICE officer who shot Renee Nicole Good, which is Jonathan E Ross, not Jonathan David Ross. Also, an incorrect reference to Ross being a resident of Minneapolis was removed.
 
US border patrol agents shoot two people in Portland
Police say pair are in hospital but condition not known, 
as mayor urges ICE to pause operations
 
by Robert Mackey in Portland
9 January 2026
The Guardian  (UK) 
 
US border patrol agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.
 
The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in hospital after a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.
 
Police initially responded to reports of a shooting outside the Adventist hospital campus in east Portland, the department said, before learning “that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help” about 3 miles (5km) away.
 
“Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital,” the police said.
“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.”
 
Authorities have not confirmed the condition of the injured, but emergency dispatch audio obtained by FOX 12 Oregon indicated that the 911 call came from a man who said he was shot twice in the arm and his wife had been shot in the chest.
 
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a man they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant connected to a Venezuelan gang. According to the agents, they opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, the statement said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene,” McLaughlin said.
 
Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a news conference:
 
 “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”
 
Bob Day, the Portland police chief, said: “This is a federal investigation. It’s being led by the FBI.”
 
Taking place a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the shooting sparked sharp condemnation and raised fears of increasing tensions in a city that had been galvanized by anti-immigration enforcement protests late last year.
 
Maxine Dexter, the Democratic representative for the district where the shooting took place, who is also a doctor, said both of the injured people “are alive, but we do not know the extent of their injuries.”
 
She also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the city.
 
“ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities,” Dexter said. “Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”
 
Dexter also demanded a local police investigation. “We must allow our local law enforcement to do its work,” she said. “There must be a comprehensive investigation without Trump’s interference.”
 
Wilson, the mayor, echoed Dexter’s call for a pause on immigration enforcement in the city. He said: “We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts. Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”
 
Kayse Jama, an Oregon state senator who lives in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, said at an evening news conference that the “welcoming” city he arrived in as a refugee from Somalia decades ago did not need aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Addressing the federal agents, he said: “This is Oregon. We do not need you, you are not welcome and you need to get the hell out of our community.”
 
Zakir Khan, a Portland civil rights advocate, called on the hospital, which is part of Oregon Health and Science University, to release any security-camera footage of the incident it might have “as soon as possible”.
 
A man who was at the medical building told the Oregonian he saw federal officers follow a Toyota pickup truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind them, before turning and speeding off.
 
There were months of protest in Portland last year centered on an ICE processing facility in the city’s south waterfront. Donald Trump tried to deploy national guard members to the city in response, but the deployment was blocked by a federal judge who said the president’s claim that the city was “war-ravaged” as a result of small-scale protests “was simply untethered to the facts”.
 
Jeff Merkley, one of Oregon’s two Democratic senators, urged protesters to remain calm in light of the shooting. “Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on X. “Don’t take the bait.”
 
The Portland police chief echoed those pleas. Bob Day said: “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”
 
A banner at the top of the Portland city government website late Thursday advised residents: “Respond with calm and purpose.”
 
Early in the evening, about a hundred protesters gathered outside city hall in downtown Portland to chant: “Abolish ICE!” A smaller number of protesters also returned to the ICE facility in south Portland, many of them dressed in the animal costumes that have helped defuse tensions in recent months. Later, police used force to clear protesters from the street outside the facility, arresting six, including a young man who usually wears an inflatable frog costume to protests but was in street clothes when detained on Thursday night.
 
Tensions remain high across several major cities in the US following the shooting of Good in Minneapolis.
 
On Thursday, the FBI took control of the investigation into that shooting, and the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence had been revoked.
 
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction.
 
Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that the state “must be part of this investigation”.
 
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to justify the deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her had been acting in “self-defense”. That narrative is at odds with witness video of the incident, which has been widely shared online, and shows the driver had turned the wheels of her vehicle away from the agent before he shot her three times as she attempted to drive away.
 
Explore more on these topics

Portland
ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Trump administration
Oregon
West Coast
US politics
US immigration
news


https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/newsletter-abolish-ice-conway/

Politics

Abolish ICE or GTFO

In this week’s Elie v. US, The Nation’s justice correspondent makes the case to get rid of ICE, explores George Conway’s congressional campaign—and shares his New Year’s resolution.


by Elie Mystal
January 9, 2026
The Nation

PHOTO: Demonstrators in Minneapolis protest the murder of Renée Good. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)


[This is a preview of Nation Justice Correspondent Elie Mystal’s new weekly newsletter. Click here to receive this newsletter in your inbox each Friday.]

Every authoritarian regime throughout history has employed a roving band of armed thugs who operate outside the law to enforce its strongman’s will. Caesar had his Praetorian Guard, Francios Duvalier had his Tonton Macoutes, Hitler had his Gestapo.

Donald Trump has ICE. ICE is functionally a paramilitary organization, armed and empowered to harass citizens, brutalize opposition, and murder people who get in their way. Like any paramilitary apparatus, its chief aim is to strike fear in the population. It does this not only through feats of violence, false imprisonment, and kidnapping but also by repeatedly showing us it can’t be held accountable for its actions. ICE agents can seemingly do anything they want, and no one is allowed to stop them: They know it, and they want us to know it.

When we look at the historical record, the horrifying reality of these thug paramilitaries is that they do not naturally melt away when the strongman is finally deposed. They stay on. They align themselves with the next strongman, or the strongman who wants to overthrow the republican government that deposed the previous strongman. The next guy in office tends to want to keep them around anyway, because having a terrorist apparatus able to operate outside the law is something that leaders of nations consistently find useful.

These paramilitaries can be dismantled, but only when the people demand it, over and over again, and refuse to support any politicians or regimes who would keep them in place. ICE can be stopped, but we do not elect people to power who actually want to stop ICE; we tend instead to elect people who want to “fund” ICE, control it, and use it for their own purposes. And that is why we fail.

ICE must be abolished, root and stem, by the next Democratic administration. As a stopgap, it must be defunded by the current collection of Democrats, should the party take power in the upcoming election. ICE is the one true litmus test for an incoming post-Trump administration. The Democrats will likely not be inclined to do this. Again, paramilitary thugs have their uses to leaders the world over, and Democrats are traditionally afraid of looking “weak” on immigration or actually dismantling the tools of the enemy. Democrats, if they’re going to do this, must be forced to do this, by the people whose support they seek.

Current issue

I’ve liked to think of myself as a single-issue voter, with that issue being Supreme Court expansion. But no longer. Abolish ICE, or GTFO of my primary.
Posted by at

Friday, January 9, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: The Consolidation and Expansion of State Violence in Society Designed by the Fascist Government to Intimidate, Assault, and Repress the General Society Via A Massive and Fully Militarized National Police Force. In These United Hates We Call this State Sanctioned Military Force ICE

AMERICA IS A FASCIST STATE

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism fascism is at the far right wing of the traditional left–right spectrum.

AMERICA IS A ROGUE STATE

A nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations.
 

 
Unfettered and unaccountable: How Trump is building a violent, shadowy federal police force
 
by J. David McSwane, ProPublica and Hannah Allam, ProPublica 
October 20, 2025
Minnesota Reformer 
 

PHOTO: Federal agents block people protesting an immigration raid at a licensed cannabis farm on near Camarillo, California, on July 10, 2025 . (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system.

Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.

“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”

One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”

And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”

During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities.

Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said.

Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country.

And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat.

One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.”

The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.”


NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 10: An ICE officers badge is seen as federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on June 10, 2025 in New York City. Federal agents are arresting immigrants during mandatory check-ins, as ICE ramps up enforcement following immigration court hearings. The Trump administration has ordered officials to increase detentions to 3,000 migrants per day. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.

The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.

The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”

Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”

“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas, in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.

In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen ICE enforcement up close.

“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and other criminals.

McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards. She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”

“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.

Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.

The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.

“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”
‘Authoritarian playbook’

Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three states before jailing her in Louisiana.

“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”

Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained for demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference.

And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”

U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, he wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it will appeal that ruling.
Where the fallout is felt



The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children, during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.

The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting “members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”

Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in the public record verifies the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party raid.

“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz said.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack of transparency and due process.
 
In plain sight


Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino, carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.

Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle of traffic.”

With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.

On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”

The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.

Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit “record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.

Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic “police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal authorities at all.

“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way? There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”

Video footage shows Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.

“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was recorded telling the officers.

Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived, the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.

Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
 

J. David McSwane, ProPublica

J. David McSwane is a national reporter for ProPublica covering the Trump administration’s effect on average Americans, particularly civil rights. This intersects with many federal agencies that oversee issues including the environment, health care, business, housing and more.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Hannah Allam, ProPublica

Hannah Allam covers national security issues, with a focus on militant movements and counterterrorism efforts for ProPublica.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/minneapolis-school-class-canceled-ice-killed-woman


FBI takes over case of ICE agent killing US woman and cuts Minnesota’s access to evidence


Minneapolis remains on edge, with several protests planned after shooting of Renee Nicole Good


People protest against the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
US politics live – latest updates


Rachel Leingang in Minneapolis, Richard Luscombe, Joseph Gedeon and Lucy Campbell

 8 January 2026
 The Guardian  (UK)

The FBI has taken full control of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, it emerged on Thursday.


In a statement, the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said it was initially called upon to help investigate the shooting before federal officials “reversed course” and said the case would be “solely led by the FBI”. With its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence revoked, the BCA said it had to “reluctantly” withdraw from the investigation.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction. “They have not been cut,” she said. “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”

But Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that “Minnesota must be part of this investigation. It feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome. And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment.”


Indeed, the reversal from federal law enforcement comes as the Trump administration continues to justify Wednesday’s deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her was acting in “self-defense”, alleging she had tried to run him over.


That narrative is at odds with video footage of the incident, which has been widely shared online. It shows Good reversing her car and letting at least one ICE vehicle pass before an officer tells her to get out of the car; she then tries to turn and drive away. An agent shoots her multiple times, remains on his feet and walks away apparently uninjured as her car crashes into a lamp-post and parked vehicle.


The agent was identified independently by the Guardian as Jonathan E Ross, a Minnesota resident and 10-year veteran of federal law enforcement. Noem continued on Thursday to defend the federal agent – whom she described as “an experienced officer” that was “following his training” – and said he had been treated in hospital after the incident. Both she and the vice-president noted that Ross had been injured in an incident six months ago when an undocumented immigrant resisted arrest in a vehicle.
Vance also defended the shooting, repeatedly claiming, baselessly, that Good was part of a “leftwing network” of people who are trying to “incite violence against our law enforcement officers”.
He told the White House press briefing without evidence that the young mother was “a victim of leftwing ideology” and had been “brainwashed”, and doubled down on the administration’s claim that the officer had acted in self-defense. Good, 37, was “dead because she tried to ram somebody with her car”, Vance said.


The deadly incident, which occurred less than a mile from the spot where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, escalated tensions that have been building for weeks in Minnesota amid ramped-up federal immigration enforcement operations and fraud investigations by the Trump administration.


Authorities in Minneapolis had canceled school classes across the city on Thursday amid safety concerns and rising political tension after the US citizen and mother of three was killed during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation the day before.

 


‘This is not normal’: Minneapolis on edge and angry after ICE killing of woman amid federal surge


Read more 


Dozens of clergy members from all faith backgrounds gathered with hundreds of people at the site of the shooting in south Minneapolis at noon to show that the city was unified in its response. “Renee Good stood for her neighbors. We now must stand for her,” said JaNaé Bates, a co-executive director of the interfaith group Isaiah.

 
The crowd chanted “ICE out now” throughout the event, against visible signs of the tragedy: red paint in the snow read “ICE kills”, and writing on the street called for ICE to leave.

 
But emotions remained high in the city, and across the US, as the basic facts of the incident remain the subject of fierce debate.

 
Ilhan Omar posted on social media Thursday morning that thousands of people had gathered to honor Good last night, and that “ICE needs to get out of Minneapolis”.

 
“We will never accept that a single federal agent can be judge, jury and executioner in our streets,” the Minnesota representative said.


Minneapolis residents hold vigil for woman fatally shot by ICE agent – video


Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, also made several appearances on television networks on Wednesday night calling for peaceful protests and doubling down on his comments at a press conference earlier in the day in which he called for ICE “to get the fuck out of Minneapolis”.


“People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized, and now, somebody is dead,” Frey said.
He said the homeland security department was already “trying to spin this as an action of self-defense”, a claim he said was “bullshit”.

 
Some Republicans seized on Frey’s comments as incendiary, with Nancy Mace, a South Carolina representative, calling for the resignations of the mayor and Walz.


Despite local officials’ calls for federal law enforcement to leave the state, the New York Times reported on Thursday that the Trump administration will deploy more than 100 US Customs and Border Protection agents and officers to Minnesota following the fatal shooting of Good.
The agents will be redirected from operations in Chicago and New Orleans. The deployment is expected to last until Sunday, the newspaper reported, citing documents it obtained.


Noem also stated that ICE operations would continue in Minneapolis, which saw a surge of about 2,000 federal agents this week to target immigrant populations.


This story was amended on 8 January 2026 to correct the name of the ICE officer who shot Renee Nicole Good, which is Jonathan E Ross, not Jonathan David Ross. Also, an incorrect reference to Ross being a resident of Minneapolis was removed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/portland-federal-agents-shooting

Portland


US border patrol agents shoot two people in Portland

Police say pair are in hospital but condition not known, as mayor urges ICE to pause operations

Robert Mackey in Portland

9 January 2026 

US border patrol agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.

The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in hospital after a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.

Police initially responded to reports of a shooting outside the Adventist hospital campus in east Portland, the department said, before learning “that a man who had been shot was calling and requesting help” about 3 miles (5km) away.


“Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel. The patients were transported to the hospital,” the police said.

“Officers have determined the two people were injured in the shooting involving federal agents.”

Authorities have not confirmed the condition of the injured, but emergency dispatch audio obtained by FOX 12 Oregon indicated that the 911 call came from a man who said he was shot twice in the arm and his wife had been shot in the chest.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement that US border patrol agents had stopped a vehicle to search for a man they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant 

connected to a Venezuelan gang. According to the agents, they opened fire when the driver of the vehicle tried to run them over, the statement said. “Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene,” McLaughlin said.

Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a news conference: “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”

Bob Day, the Portland police chief, said: “This is a federal investigation. It’s being led by the FBI.”

Taking place a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the shooting sparked sharp condemnation and raised fears of increasing tensions in a city that had been galvanized by anti-immigration enforcement protests late last year.

Maxine Dexter, the Democratic representative for the district where the shooting took place, who is also a doctor, said both of the injured people “are alive, but we do not know the extent of their injuries.”

She also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the city.

“ICE has done nothing but inject terror, chaos, and cruelty into our communities,” Dexter said. “Trump’s immigration machine is using violence to control our communities – straight out of the authoritarian playbook. ICE must immediately end all active operations in Portland.”

Dexter also demanded a local police investigation. “We must allow our local law enforcement to do its work,” she said. “There must be a comprehensive investigation without Trump’s interference.”

Wilson, the mayor, echoed Dexter’s call for a pause on immigration enforcement in the city. He said: “We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts. Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”

Kayse Jama, an Oregon state senator who lives in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, said at an evening news conference that the “welcoming” city he arrived in as a refugee from Somalia decades ago did not need aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Addressing the federal agents, he said: “This is Oregon. We do not need you, you are not welcome and you need to get the hell out of our community.”

Zakir Khan, a Portland civil rights advocate, called on the hospital, which is part of Oregon Health and Science University, to release any security-camera footage of the incident it might have “as soon as possible”.

A man who was at the medical building told the Oregonian he saw federal officers follow a Toyota pickup truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it. One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind them, before turning and speeding off.

There were months of protest in Portland last year centered on an ICE processing facility in the city’s south waterfront. Donald Trump tried to deploy national guard members to the city in response, but the deployment was blocked by a federal judge who said the president’s claim that the city was “war-ravaged” as a result of small-scale protests “was simply untethered to the facts”.

Jeff Merkley, one of Oregon’s two Democratic senators, urged protesters to remain calm in light of the shooting. “Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on X. “Don’t take the bait.”

The Portland police chief echoed those pleas. Bob Day said: “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”

A banner at the top of the Portland city government website late Thursday advised residents: “Respond with calm and purpose.”

Early in the evening, about a hundred protesters gathered outside city hall in downtown Portland to chant: “Abolish ICE!” A smaller number of protesters also returned to the ICE facility in south Portland, many of them dressed in the animal costumes that have helped defuse tensions in recent months. Later, police used force to clear protesters from the street outside the facility, arresting six, including a young man who usually wears an inflatable frog costume to protests but was in street clothes when detained on Thursday night.

Tensions remain high across several major cities in the US following the shooting of Good in Minneapolis.

On Thursday, the FBI took control of the investigation into that shooting, and the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said its access to the case materials, witnesses and evidence had been revoked.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, denied that the BCA had been cut out of the investigation and said it was a matter of jurisdiction.

Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told a news conference that the state “must be part of this investigation”.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to justify the deadly shooting by accusing Good of engaging in “an act of domestic terrorism” and claiming that the ICE agent who shot her had been acting in “self-defense”. That narrative is at odds with witness video of the incident, which has been widely shared online, and shows the driver had turned the wheels of her vehicle away from the agent before he shot her three times as she attempted to drive away.

Explore more on these topics:

Portland
ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Trump administration
Oregon
West Coast
US politics
US immigration
news

Posted by at
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)