US Justice Department investigates Minnesota officials following Renee Good shooting
Yana Winter
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, for an alleged conspiracy to obstruct immigration officials, a source familiar with the investigation said.
The source confirmed the reports in the newspaper. Washington PostCBS News and other media outlets said the investigation stemmed from statements made by Walz and Frey, both Democrats, about thousands of federal agents deployed to the Minneapolis area in recent weeks.
The Justice Department did not immediately comment on the matter.
Both officials, along with other Minnesota Democrats, condemned the ICE operation and Good’s death and accused Trump of deliberately inciting chaos.
Reacting to the news of the investigation on social media, Walz said that the justice system had been weaponized.
“Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic,” he said. Walz’s office said it had not received notice of any investigation.
This came hours after newly released transcripts of emergency calls and dispatch records detailing the chaotic and dangerous scene that unfolded after an ICE agent shot Renee Good in Minneapolis; It was a murder that became a national flashpoint amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.
In one panicked call after another, witnesses told police what they saw: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the street, several shots fired at a driver, his car crashing into other cars, blood everywhere.
“There were 15 ICE agents and they shot him because he wouldn’t open his car door,” one caller said, adding a string of expletives.
As the operator urged the person to slow his breathing, another caller said, “ICE shot through his windshield.” “He’s bleeding.”
While Good was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, angry protesters were cutting crime scene tape in the area and police were trying to evacuate ICE officers from the scene, according to an incident report that recorded communications between emergency responders.
According to the report, one person forwarded the message “IS BEING SURROUNDED IN ICE” about 80 minutes after the shooting.
Minnesota’s most populous city has been the scene of increasingly tense confrontations between residents and federal officers since Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot behind the wheel of her car by an ICE officer Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7.
At the time, Good was taking part in one of several neighborhood patrols organized by local activists to track and monitor ICE activity.
The shooting came a day after the Trump administration announced the deployment of 2,000 immigration officers to Minneapolis in what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called the largest operation in history.
The number of DHS staff has since grown to nearly 3,000, and the Twin Cities metro area includes Minneapolis and St. It dwarfed the number of local police officers in St. Paul.
Since the ICE surge, agents have arrested both immigrants and protesters, occasionally breaking windows and pulling people out of their cars. Some officers found themselves surrounded by jeering and shouting onlookers for stopping Blacks and Latinos who turned out to be U.S. citizens.
Trump administration officials complained about what they called “doxing” by federal agents, including Ross, and said it put officers at risk, leading them to wear masks to protect their identities.
In Good’s shooting, Trump and other administration officials accused him of deliberately trying to run his car over Ross and other agents at the scene.
Videos showed him turning his wheels away from officers, and Democratic city and state officials dismissed the government’s explanation as false.
The Trump administration has said Ross was injured during the incident — although video shows him wandering around afterward — noting that he suffered serious injuries that left him dragged behind a vehicle during an unrelated traffic stop months earlier.
Reuters, AP
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