A top state law enforcement official said Thursday that federal agencies were denying Minnesota investigators access to evidence from a fatal shooting by an immigration enforcement officer the day before, preventing them from participating in the inquiry into an incident that officials have described in starkly different terms.
Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said on Thursday that his agency had withdrawn from the investigation of the death of Renee Nicole Good, 37, as a result.
“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands,” Mr. Evans said in a statement.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said it was a matter of jurisdiction.
“They have not been cut out,” Ms. Noem said at a news conference Thursday, in response to a reporter who asked about state investigators. “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”
Tim Walz, the governor, said at a news conference that “Minnesota must be part of this investigation.”
“I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment,” Mr. Walz added. He said that some of the federal government’s statements regarding the circumstances of the shooting had been “verifiably false.”
Cindy Burnham, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. office in the Minneapolis area, declined to comment.
The dispute was the latest development in an escalating clash between state and federal officials, which has been building for weeks over immigration enforcement operations and fraud investigations in Minnesota, and boiled over after the killing of Ms. Good in her vehicle.
Federal officers deployed tear gas to disperse demonstrators at a federal building on the outskirts of Minneapolis early Thursday, as outrage grew in the city and elsewhere over Ms. Good’s killing. City and state officials and the Trump administration provided vastly different characterizations of the shooting in a south Minneapolis neighborhood.
Federal officials, including President Trump, defended the shooting as lawful, saying that the agent who fired his weapon was acting in self defense. City and state officials described those accounts variously as “propaganda,” “garbage” and “bullshit,” with a video analysis showing that the woman’s vehicle appeared to be turning away from the officer as he opened fire.
Pointing to the differing accounts, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, said in an interview on Thursday that it was “problematic to say the least” that the state was no longer part of the investigation.
Protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement action in Minneapolis have taken place for weeks, but Ms. Good’s killing ratcheted up the tension on Thursday morning at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building just outside the city. By 9 a.m., federal agents had pushed protesters across the street from the building after deploying tear gas.
By late morning, more than 100 immigration agents remained on the scene in tactical gear, with many wearing gas masks or ski masks. The Whipple Building is home to offices for several federal agencies, including the local ICE headquarters.
The building also houses an immigration court, which was closed on Thursday. Public schools were also closed across the city, and will remain so on Friday, because of “safety concerns related to today’s incidents around the city,” school officials said in a statement.
In addition to the killing of Ms. Good, there were reports of an altercation on Wednesday involving Border Patrol agents at Roosevelt High School, about four miles from the scene of the shooting.
Minneapolis has been on edge for weeks, amid a surge of immigration enforcement work that many local and state leaders said was bound to stoke chaos. Governor Tim Walz put the blame squarely on President Trump and Ms. Noemasking them to pull back federal agents and declaring at a news conference: “You’ve done enough.”
Nonetheless, more federal agents are on the way. According to documents obtained Thursday by The New York Times, the Trump administration is deploying more than 100 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to Minnesota from Chicago and New Orleans.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to pause operations in Chicago to support the operation in Minnesota. Border Patrol officials also plan to send all nonlethal weapons housed in Chicago to Minnesota, according to the documents.
The deployment of additional Border Patrol agents is expected to last through the weekend, with a planned return to their cities on Sunday. The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the plans.
Tensions between federal and state officials have been exacerbated by a fraud scheme that siphoned money from social service programs in the Minneapolis area. The president has unleashed xenophobic tirades and he has made repeated, derisive comments about members of Minnesota’s large Somali diaspora, whose members make up a majority of the fraud defendants.
The shooting on Wednesday happened on Portland Avenue, less than a mile away from the spot where George Floyd was killed by the police in 2020, prompting angry protests and tearful vigils late into the night.
Jamie Kelter Davis contributed reporting.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports for The Times on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice.
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