MINNEAPOLIS — A federal immigration agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman Wednesday morning during an enforcement operation in south Minneapolis, prompting protests, sharp rebukes from city leaders and calls for an independent investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were making arrests in the area when “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle.” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that an ICE agent, “fearing for his life,” fired “defensive shots,” striking the woman, who later died.

DHS did not immediately identify the ICE agent.

The victim was identified by her mother as Twin Cities resident Renee Nicole Good, who is from the Colorado Springs area. A relative told Gazette news partner 9News that Good still has several family members in Colorado and had also lived in the Kansas City area.

Good’s mother, 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, the Star Tribune reported. “She was probably terrified.”

The Kansas City Star reported Good had lived in Kansas City as recently as the fall of 2023. She filed a petition in Jackson County Circuit Court on Oct. 18, 2023, to change her last name and gave an address in Kansas City.

According to her petition, Good wanted to change her last name from Renee Nicole Macklin to Renee Nicole Macklin Good. Her stated reason for the name change: “I want to share a name with my partner.”

The document said Good had three children, who at the time of the filing were ages 13, 10 and 3. The two older children lived in Colorado, and the youngest lived in Kansas City, according to the document.

Multiple neighbors and bystanders said Good appeared to be trying to leave the scene when agents fired into her vehicle. Aiden Perzana, who lives nearby on Portland Avenue, said Good’s car, a purple Honda Pilot SUV, was perpendicular to the road with unmarked federal vehicles positioned on one side of it.

He said agents approached the vehicle and ordered the driver out before she reversed briefly and then accelerated forward. Video of the encounter shows one agent attempting to open the driver’s door and reaching a hand through the open window. As she began to drive forward, another agent in front of the vehicle then fired at least two shots at close range into the car.

“She was trying to get away,” said Emily Heller, a neighbor who observed the encounter.

The Rev. Lee Ann Bryce, lead minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Colorado Springs, said the fatal shooting of a woman who “showed up to bear witness and, in a moment of moral urgency, used her vehicle to block enforcement activity” is not about one tragic death.

“It is about the kind of country we are becoming, and the kind of people we are willing to be,” she said at a rally in front of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado Springs on Wednesday night.

“Blocking with a vehicle is not a capital offense. Civil resistance is not a death sentence. And when nonviolent intervention is met with lethal force, something has gone deeply wrong,” Bryce told attendees.

“In my faith tradition, we believe every person is made in the image of God — not some people, not citizens only, not the documented only. Every person. Authority exists to protect life, not to extinguish it.”

The group that gathered in Colorado Springs did so to stand in solidarity with the deceased woman’s family and loved ones, Bryce said, as well as with immigrants, interventionists and objectors.

“Demanding accountability is not anti-law. Insisting on human dignity is not radical. What is radical is the idea that some lives can be erased without consequence,” she said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Cmdr. Gregory Bovino was at the scene alongside armed federal agents, many wearing bulletproof vests, helmets and face masks. His appearance came a day after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived in Minneapolis, as federal immigration authorities signaled an expanded enforcement presence in the Twin Cities.

Perzana rejected DHS’ characterization of the shooting, insisting that the motorist was not attempting to ram anyone as she fled.

“They’re whitewashing it; that’s absolutely not what happened,” he said. “Somebody was trying to pull her out of her car. She was just trying to get away. There’s no way she was aiming for anybody. It’s just absurd.”

Lynette Reini-Grandell, who lives about half a block away, said she was filming ICE activity when she heard what sounded like three gunshots — “pop, pop, pop” — and saw the Honda Pilot lurch forward and strike a parked car.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference that MPD officers responded to Portland Avenue between 33rd and 34th streets and found Good suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. Officers attempted lifesaving measures, including CPR, before she was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

Witness Venus de Mars confirmed that law enforcement officers conducted CPR. “And then the ambulances came and they loaded her onto a stretcher,” she said.

O’Hara said MPD secured the scene and began preserving evidence before turning the investigation over to the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which will jointly investigate the use of deadly force.

The shooting drew a heavy law enforcement response and escalated tensions. Minneapolis police officers flooded the area and formed lines as crowds gathered, shouting at federal agents and blowing whistles. Federal immigration agents deployed chemical spray at activists multiple times, leaving several people coughing and rinsing their eyes with water and milk.

Protesters remained at the scene long after ICE agents left, chanting and yelling at law enforcement officers as they set up metal barriers around the scene. Law enforcement closed off several blocks of Portland Avenue as hundreds gathered at the scene of the shooting throughout the early afternoon. Dozens of local police watched from the street, and a crew of state troopers in fluorescent green showed up shortly before 1:30 p.m. MST

As local and state police left the shooting scene in a convoy of vehicles after 2 p.m., hundreds of protesters followed, some hurling snowballs and kicking at the vans carrying officers. Others tried to stop them from doing so. The protesters then marched north along Portland Avenue, against traffic, shouting for ICE to leave the city.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the shooting in a post on Truth Social, where he claimed Good “viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

City and state leaders quickly condemned the federal operation. At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Jacob Frey said the shooting was “devastating” and delivered a blunt message to federal agents: “ICE, get the f— out of Minneapolis.”

Frey also pushed back on any claim the shooting was self-defense.

“This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed,” he said, calling the self-defense narrative “garbage … that is not true.”

Noem, speaking at a news conference in Brownsville, Texas, said the incident showed the “assaults” ICE officers face and characterized it as an act of “domestic terrorism.”

Gov. Tim Walz said he has issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard to be deployed if necessary.

“To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, you’ve done enough,” he said during a news conference. “There’s nothing more important than Minnesotans’ safety.”

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty called for a local investigation, saying it was the only way to ensure transparency. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on X that it supports a “full and transparent investigation.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer said on Fox News he is “not going to jump to conclusions” before a law enforcement investigation but that “there is a ICE officer standing directly in front of the car when it starts to accelerate.”

Federal immigration agents are bound by the same constitutional limits on use of force as local police. Under the Fourth Amendment, courts evaluate use of force by all law enforcement — federal, state or local — using an “objective reasonableness” standard that asks whether a reasonable officer would have believed the force was necessary given the circumstances, including whether there was an immediate threat.

Deadly force is generally justified only when an officer reasonably believes there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.

While ICE did not immediately respond to a request for information about next steps for the agent who shot Good, the BCA said its agents “are involved in the investigation regarding the use-of-force incident that occurred earlier today in Minneapolis involving an ICE officer.”

The agency added the investigation will be conducted jointly with the FBI.

Gazette reporter Debbie Kelley contributed to this report.