A person on a balcony watches the scuffles between federal agents and community members amid tear gas clouds at the scene of a shooting involving federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 24, 2026.
After the killing of a civilian on the street on Saturday, ICE agents use tear gas against protesters. (Photo: REUTERS)
In Minneapolis, Trump's immigration agency ICE is conducting its most brutal operation to date, "Operation Metro Surge." Its immigration detainees have now shot and killed another person. Polls suggest: Trump is going too far.
Renee Good's car is parked across a one-way street in Minneapolis. One ICE employee tells her to get out, another tells her to drive on. Renee Good reversed a bit, then slowly turned forward, facing the direction of travel. Another employee at her window shot her four times at point-blank range: twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the head. "Fucking cunt," the masked gunman said as Good's vehicle slammed into a parked car and a lamppost a few meters away. She was dead within minutes.
That was on the morning of January 7. Since then, the controversy surrounding ICE's brutal methods has reached a new level, and the US is in turmoil. In freezing Minneapolis, people are taking to the streets, confronting deportation squads who are defending themselves with tear gas. On Friday, many private companies went on strike. On Saturday, ICE shot and killed another American citizen in the street. This weekend in January marks the violent culmination of Trump's immigration policies in his first year in office, during which ICE deported approximately 500,000 people. Their employees have killed at least seven people so far.
The deaths, the brutality, the racism, the impunity of ICE, the administration's blatant lies: Critics see their accusations confirmed that the migrant deterrents operate like a lawless White House secret police force whose employees are unconditionally protected. While ICE is constantly active, it simultaneously moves thousands of uniformed officers from city to city to carry out coordinated deportations. In "Operation Metro Surge" in Minneapolis, for example, more than 3,000 ICE employees are deployed, according to US media, along with border patrol agents. Greg Bovino, head of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), is also frequently seen walking the streets like a field marshal in a military double-button coat, assessing the situation.
Dragged across the asphalt
Trump and his administration justify all of this with allegedly rampant migrant crime, even though statistics prove the opposite: Immigrants without legal status are, according to these statistics, more law-abiding than people with US passports. The highly heated debate surrounding the "largest deportation operation in US history," which Republicans announced before Trump began his second term, is fueled by statements and a lack of understanding from the administration, while ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) appears to continue its rampage through US cities unchecked. Disturbing video footage repeatedly shows masked officers, usually dressed in military olive green, smashing car windows, dragging men and women from their seats, and forcing them across the asphalt. Americans are repeatedly among the victims.
Most recently, an internal memo was leaked stating that ICE officers are permitted to enter apartments and houses without a warrant in their search for migrants—even though this is officially considered unconstitutional. This memo also sparked intense public debate about the deportation agency's practices, which often fail to inform those slated for deportation but instead, with the backing of the Supreme Court, arrest them off the street based on their appearance and other criteria—racial profiling. They lurk at court hearings or visa interviews, at educational institutions and places of worship.
"They target people because they look Somali or Latino, nothing else," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. On Friday, for example, school employees said ICE officers used a five-year-old boy as bait to arrest his father. The two Ecuadorians had applied for asylum through the proper channels, their lawyer said. Nevertheless, they were taken to a deportation detention center in Texas.
"Absolute Immunity"
After Renee Goods' death, Vice President JD Vance claimed that ICE employees enjoyed "absolute immunity." Trump recently called the incident a "tragedy"—because Goods' father was one of his "great supporters" and hopefully would remain so: "ICE will sometimes make mistakes," he said, more or less. The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, and the White House called Good a "terrorist" and defended the killing as alleged self-defense by the gunman. Instead of investigating him,
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