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:

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Thursday, January 8, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Ongoing LIVE Coverage of the Horrific Fallout From the Murderous Carnage of ICE and the Massive Protests Against Their Criminal Actions by Citizens of Minneapolis Minnesota

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/07/us/minnesota-shooting-ice

Officials Dispute Federal Account of Fatal ICE Encounter in Minnesota

Federal officials said a woman was trying to kill agents with a car in Minneapolis. City and state officials called that account false, demanding an end to the immigration crackdown.


Published Jan. 7, 2026
 
Updated Jan. 8, 2026, 11:18 a.m. ET

Video

Federal Agent Fatally Shoots Woman in Minneapolis

2:13

Federal officials claimed that the 37-year-old woman was trying to kill agents with a car in Minneapolis, while city and state officials disputed their account. Credit:  David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Pinned


Julie BosmanMitch Smith and Dan Simmons

Reporting from Chicago and Minneapolis
 
Here’s what to know.

State and local officials demanded an end to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota after a federal officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Details remained in dispute, with President Trump saying on social media that the agents had acted in self-defense, while state and local officials described federal accounts of the shooting with terms like “propaganda” and “garbage.”

Federal officials defended the use of force, saying the woman had “weaponized her vehicle” before being shot. At a news conference, Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said the woman was “stalking” officers, and that the agent who killed her “used his training to save his life and those of his colleagues.”

Mayor Jacob Frey called the accounts of federal officials “bullshit,” describing the shooting instead as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota posted on social media, “Don’t believe this propaganda machine.”

Connor Janeksela, 30, who lives on the street where the shooting took place, described what he saw: “One of the ICE agents tried to rip her door open, and another one got in front of the vehicle and then shouted, ‘Stop!’ before firing three times within a second of saying, ‘Stop.’”

In his own news conference, the governor said the shooting was predictable. “We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety,” Mr. Walz said, adding that it cost a person her life on Wednesday.

Here’s what we’re covering:

What videos show: Footage of the shooting posted on social media and verified by The New York Times show two federal agents trying to get a woman to exit a vehicle that is partially blocking a street. The driver reverses, then pulls forward and begins to turn. A third agent pulls out a gun and fires a shot, then continues firing as the vehicle moves past him. Watch the footage ›

Victim identified: The woman who was killed by federal immigration agents was identified as Renee Nicole Good by two officials in Minnesota with knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to share details. The Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said in an earlier news conference that there was “nothing to indicate that this woman was the target of any law enforcement investigation.” Read more ›

Calls for calm: Governor Walz asked for people to protest peacefully, adding that the state’s National Guard troops were prepared to deploy if demonstrations got out of hand. On Wednesday night, thousands gathered for a vigil, packing several blocks around the site of the shooting and yelling chants against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The shooting was about a mile from where George Floyd was killed by the police in 2020. Read more ›


Other shootings: In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles. Read more

Jan. 8, 2026, 1:42 a.m. ETJan. 8, 2026

Jesus Jiménez

Reporting from Los Angeles

Outside a complex of federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, about two dozen protesters gathered with drums and flags, chanting, “ICE out of L.A.” The crowd was small compared with the ones last summer, when protesters took to the streets of downtown for days, prompting Trump to send National Guard troops to the area.

Jan. 8, 2026, 12:19 a.m. ETJan. 8, 2026

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Reporting from Minneapolis

There are candles and bouquets of flowers around a makeshift memorial to Renee Good at one corner of the intersection where she was killed. Signs, too. Several urge peace and one reads, “ICE in drinks, not communities!”


Credit:  Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs/The New York Times

Scenes From Minneapolis

Jan. 8, 2026, 12:07 a.m. ETJan. 8, 2026

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Reporting from Minneapolis

There is no obvious police presence here and the crowd is subdued. People occasionally chant slogans opposing the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, but they are mostly mingling and chatting with each other.


Jan. 8, 2026, 12:02 a.m. ETJan. 8, 2026

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Reporting from Minneapolis

A few hundred people are paying respects, late into the night, to Renee Good, the woman who was killed by a federal immigration agent here earlier in the day. Mourners and activists sit around two small firepits, burning wood to stay warm, at the icy intersection of Portland Avenue and 34th Street in South Minneapolis, where the shooting took place.


Jan. 7, 2026, 11:04 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Dan Simmons

Reporting from Minneapolis

A new group of protesters is at the scene of the shooting and has taken over the intersection where the victim, Renee Good, was killed. They are chanting loudly against ICE intervention in Minneapolis. The police are not here.



Credit:  Dan Simmons for The New York Times


Jan. 7, 2026, 10:16 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Mitch Smith

Reporting from Chicago

Minneapolis Public Schools said it was canceling classes on Thursday and Friday “due to safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city.”


Jan. 7, 2026, 9:43 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Pooja Salhotra

Representative Robin Kelly, Democrat of Illinois, announced plans to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the shooting. Kelly, whose district includes part of the Chicago area that was targeted by federal immigration officers, accused Noem of obstruction of justice, violation of public trust and self-dealing. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois also criticized federal agents’ actions, calling for Noem’s resignation.


Jan. 7, 2026, 9:33 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Dan Simmons

Reporting from Minneapolis

Bella Bessantez, 48, lives directly across the street from the scene of the shooting. After witnessing the shooting, seeing the sea of people at the vigil from her second-floor balcony brought some hope, she said. “I’m happy to see the unity of the people,” she said.


Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Jan. 7, 2026, 9:09 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Mitch Smith

Reporting from Chicago
Minnesota was long at odds with the Trump administration. It’s boiled over.

Video


Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting

0:49

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense. Credit:  Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

After a federal immigration agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Mayor Jacob Frey called the U.S. government’s account of what happened “bullshit.” State legislators chimed in, lamenting a “hostile federal government.” And Gov. Tim Walz derided what he called a federal “propaganda machine,” saying that the shooting was both “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable.”

The outpouring of anger from the Democrats who govern Minnesota marked a boiling-over point in a rhetorical fight with the Trump administration that had been building for weeks.

The next steps in that dispute seemed uncertain.

Federal officials, who vowed to continue a surge of immigration enforcement work in the Minneapolis area despite protests, defended the shooting on Wednesday as necessary and lawful.

“This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Frey and Mr. Walz both warned demonstrators to stay peaceful, stating their belief that the federal government was looking for a pretext to deploy the military on Minnesota’s streets.

“Do not take the bait,” Mr. Walz said. “Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law.”

Bad blood between Mr. Walz and President Trump is nothing new. Mr. Trump has long criticized the governor’s handling of the riots that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, and the pair exchanged campaign-trail insults in 2024 when Mr. Walz was the Democratic nominee for vice president. When a gunman killed a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and her husband last year, Mr. Trump said he had no plans to call Mr. Walz, whom he described as “whacked out.” Mr. Walz, for his part, criticized immigration agents last year as “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”

But that mutual distaste morphed into a far more tangible clash in recent weeks, as the president and his allies portrayed Minnesota as a failure of liberal governance, citing a fraud scheme that resulted in hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars being pilfered from social service programs. The president began describing Minnesota’s large Somali diaspora, whose members make up a majority of the fraud defendants, in especially derisive terms. Immigration agents briefly surged into the state last month, sometimes clashing with residents.

All of it was prelude to this week, when the federal government announced the deployment of around 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis area in what it said was its “largest operation to date.” The mobilization, they said, was necessary to crack down on fraud and to root out illegal immigrants. Plans for the surge continued after Mr. Walz announced on Monday that he was dropping his campaign for a third term as governor.

“Dropping out of the race won’t shield him from the consequences of his actions,” a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said.

As the agents began arriving in Minnesota, state and local leaders warned that it would create chaos and that people could get hurt.

When that prediction came true on Wednesday, federal officials blamed the woman who was killed and “sanctuary politicians.” Minnesota leaders said it was the fault of the federal government.

Jan. 7, 2026, 8:09 p.m. ETJan. 7, 2026

Christina Morales
The victim in the ICE shooting was remembered for her kindness.

Video

Thousands Gather at Vigil for Minnesota Woman Fatally Shot by ICE

0:50

A memorial for Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was killed by a federal agent, drew a crowd in Minneapolis.CreditCredit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The woman killed by a federal agent on Wednesday in Minneapolis was remembered as a compassionate, giving person.

The woman, identified by the authorities as Renee Nicole Good, 37, was a cherished Minnesotan, said State Representative Leigh Finke of St. Paul, Minn., who paid tribute to her in a statement. Ms. Good was “a loved and celebrated community member, who has now been stripped away fro

Ms. Good, a U.S. citizen, lived in Minneapolis with her partner, according to an interview with her mother, Donna Ganger, in The Minnesota Star Tribune, which said that Ms. Good had a 6-year-old child.

Federal officials said an ICE agent shot and killed Ms. Good in self-defense, and they accused her of trying to use her vehicle to run over law enforcement officers. Local officials have strongly disputed that account.

Ms. Ganger told The Star Tribune that her daughter “was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” adding that she was “loving, forgiving and affectionate.”

Ms. Ganger declined a request for additional comment, and other family members could not be immediately reached.

Ms. Finke condemned the federal immigration operation that led to the fatal encounter, calling for those activities to end, “as well as full transparency and accountability to ensure justice for the victim.”

Mitch Smith, Kevin Draper and Julie Bosman contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: ICE MURDERS RENEE NICOLE GOOD!--Hold ICE Accountable for its Deadly Actions


 
A masked federal agent guns down a US civilian in broad daylight, Donald Trump wants to balloon the military budget, and is perennial MAGA loser Kari Lake running for Senate again? 

by Peter Rothpletz
January 8, 2026
Zeteo


I wish I could say “good morning,” but the greeting simply doesn’t apply today, and Zeteo is not in the business of faux-cheeriness for the sake of convention. Peter here, filled with the incandescent rage of 10,000 suns after watching what happened in Minnesota yesterday. But before we get to the Lede, first some housekeeping… My close pal and Dem congressional candidate in NYC, Cameron Kasky, will join Mehdi for a can’t-miss Zeteo Zoom Town Hall TODAY at 4 pm ET to discuss what he saw while visiting the West Bank late last month. The details for signing up are in the ‘Don’t Miss It’ section of this email.

Now, in today’s ‘First Draft,’ an ICE goon shoots a US citizen in the face and kills her, the Trump administration expands on its plan to seize Venezuelan oil, the EU tells the US president he can forget about annexing Greenland, and Republicans revive their gerrymandering-fueled plot to subvert the midterm elections


🚨 Don’t miss our LIVE in-person event in DC: Join Mehdi, Swin, Ro Khanna, Joy Reid, Jim Acosta, Sarah Matthews, Miles Taylor, and another very special political guest for a powerful evening at the Howard Theatre in Washington, DC, to mark one year of Trump, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026!

Get your tickets here!


 
ICE Killed Good


PHOTO: People protest against ICE during a vigil at the site where a woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier in the day in Minneapolis, on Jan. 7, 2026. Photo by Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

The president of the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and the squad they’ve amassed with the sorriest dregs of society have, at long last, Made America Great Again. All it took was orphaning a 6-year-old boy.

Renee Nicole Good, self-described on her Instagram profile as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer,” was killed in Minneapolis yesterday afternoon, shot in the head at least once and perhaps three times by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Watch the disturbing video, via this link which was obtained by the Minnesota Reformer:


Good’s “murder,” as described by multiple Democratic lawmakers in the aftermath of the shooting, comes on the heels of the Trump administration deploying some 2,000 ICE officers to the North Star State.

Last night, the president took to social media to claim, despite clear video evidence widely circulating online showing otherwise, Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” He added it’s “hard to believe” the federal agent is even alive.

Trump’s blatantly dishonest smears of Good and her actions stand in stark contrast with how the president has lionized violent Jan. 6 rioters, in particular Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by an officer as she stormed the US Capitol.

The smears feel even sicker once you see the photo of the glove compartment in Good’s car filled with stuffed animals.

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: ABOLISH ICE!

ICE Agent Shoots and Kills Woman at Minneapolis Protest

“I have a message to ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis,” said Mayor Jacob Frey after the shooting.

by Sharon Zhang
January 7, 2026
Truthout


 
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by a federal agent, on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Stephen Maturen / Getty Images

A masked immigration agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis during a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Wednesday.

Officials have not yet released the woman’s identity, but she was identified by Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) as a U.S. citizen, and local officials cited her as 37 years old. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed the shooting.

Local reports say that residents were blocking federal agents on a snowy residential road in a protest. The killing was allegedly recorded, captured from multiple angles, with the videos corroborated by witness reports.

Video footage shows a running car stopped perpendicular to the flow of traffic, with a woman in the driver’s seat with the window rolled down. Two federal agents pull up in a truck to join other masked officers at the scene. The agents confront the woman, and a voice is heard saying “get out of the fucking car.” One of the agents rushes to the driver’s door and tries to pull the handle, but it is locked.

As the agent tries to break in, the driver backs up, then begins driving forward, seemingly in an attempt to get around another stopped car and leave the scene. Just as the car begins moving forward, however, another masked federal agent appears around the front of the car and fires at the driver’s head. Three shots can be heard.

One witness told MPR that the federal agent had put his body on the front of the driver’s car at the time. This appears to be the same agent who killed the woman.

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” the witness who lives on the road, Emily Heller, told the outlet.

After the shooting, the car quickly accelerates and slams into another car parked on the other side of the road, footage shows. The driver’s body was slumped over.

The killing apparently occurred less than a mile away from where police officers killed George Floyd in 2020.

Almost immediately after the incident, DHS moved to vilify the woman.

President Donald Trump posted a slowed down clip of the shooting on Truth Social showing the woman turning away from the agent as he shot her. Even though the video directly contradicts his narrative, Trump says she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” and “it is hard to believe [the officer] is alive.”

Trump claims the agent is in the hospital, and blamed the “Radical Left” for the shooting. The video footage of the shooting shows the agent was several feet away from the car for what appeared to be his second and third shots.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went on Fox News just hours after the killing to characterize the killing as self defense.

“Our ICE officers were out on an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow,” said Noem. “They were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them, and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over.”

Noem called the incident an “act of domestic terrorism.”

The officials’ comments were immediately ripped as patently untrue and in direct contradiction to witness accounts and video footage.

“You’re lying. There was no attempt to run the officer over and no ICE agents appear to be hurt,” said Omar on X, quoting a DHS statement on the incident. “Get out of our city.”

“Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everyone directly. That is bullshit,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in a press conference.

Commentators brought up a similar case of a woman in Chicago, Marimar Martinez. In October, a Customs and Border Patrol agent shot Martinez multiple times, with the federal government accusing her of trying to ram the agent’s car.

But Martinez’s legal team has said that it was, in fact, federal agents who rammed her, and body camera footage of the incident released shortly after also contradicted the government’s narrative of the incident. Ultimately, the Department of Justice dropped charges against Martinez.

In a press conference after the shooting, Frey emphasized his call for the Trump administration to withdraw their immigration agents from the city.

“There’s little I can say, again, to make this situation better,” Frey said. “But I do have a message, for our community, for our city. I have a message to ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

This story is breaking and will be updated. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Sharon Zhang
 

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
 


LATEST NEWS UPDATE ON THE MURDER:
 
 
‘She was an amazing human being’: Mother identifies woman shot, killed by ICE agent

Renee Nicole Good, 37, lived in Minneapolis with her partner just blocks from where she was shot.

By Paul Walsh and Jeff Day
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 7, 2026


A poster showing a photograph of Renee Nicole Good, 37, hangs on a lamppost at the site where she was shot and killed by a federal agent while she was in her vehicle in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

The woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, was identified by her mother as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

Good died just a few blocks from where she lived. A woman who answered the door at Good’s home declined to comment.

Donna Ganger told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter lived in the Twin Cities with her partner. Ganger said the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.

“That’s so stupid” that she was killed, Ganger said, after learning some of the circumstances from a reporter. “She was probably terrified.”

Ganger said her daughter is “not part of anything like that at all,” referring to protesters challenging ICE agents.

“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” she said. “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.”

An Instagram account that appears to belong to Good describes her as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”

Good had previously been married to Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., who died in 2023 at the age of 36. Macklin’s father, Timmy Ray Macklin Sr., was shocked to hear the news that Good had been shot and killed.

He said Good and his son had a child who is now 6 years old.

“There’s nobody else in his life,” Macklin said. “I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come and get my grandchild.”

Macklin added that Good had two additional children who he believed lived with her extended family.

In 2020 while studying creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., Good was awarded the school’s undergraduate poetry prize for “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”

A mini-bio on the English Department’s Facebook page said Good, known then as Renee Macklin, was from Colorado Springs and hosted a podcast with her husband, Tim Macklin.

“When she is not writing, reading or talking about writing,” the post continued, “she has movie marathons and makes messy art.”

 

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