President Donald Trump said the 37-year-old woman killed Wednesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” the agent who shot her in self-defense, making the claim within hours of the shooting, before investigators had completed their work.
“The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis,” he said in a social media post. “They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE.”
Trump’s analysis was based on video of the fatal shooting, he said on Truth Social, where he shared distant footage of the incident that shows the woman’s car moving toward the ICE agent who shot her. Clips circulating online do not show the minutes leading up to the encounter, establish the woman’s intent or offer evidence of a coordinated operation.
His response underscored how quickly he moves to frame violent encounters through images and video, often ahead of official findings. Like millions of Americans, the president relied on piecemeal footage from witnesses in southern Minneapolis — a phenomenon that has become the basis of how fatal police encounters are understood and contested in real time.
Unlike other viewers, however, Trump is the nation’s most powerful political actor and oversees the agency involved. His administration has also aggressively expanded immigration enforcement, placing ICE agents in cities like Minneapolis and potentially giving his comments added weight as investigators review the encounter.
Democratic state and local officials, citing similar video, instead saw brazen ICE agents committing an act of violence they had long feared was inevitable in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
“We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous operations are a threat to public safety, that someone was going to get hurt,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Just yesterday, I said exactly that.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the agent was “recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed” and called for ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
Videos that surfaced immediately after the shooting show the woman’s vehicle, a burgundy Honda Pilot SUV, stopped in the middle of the road across travel lanes with the driver’s-side window rolled down. They do not show the events leading up to that moment, including any prior interaction between the woman and ICE agents.
Two ICE agents pulled up, exited their vehicle and approached the SUV. The vehicle then began to reverse, and one of the agents reached out and held on to the door handle, the videos show. As the SUV moved out of reverse and drove forward, a third ICE agent, positioned closer to the front of the car, quickly drew his service weapon and fired three times.
That third agent appears, in the video, to have been in front of the vehicle when it began advancing and to have been beside it by the time of the last shots.
Video footage shows the third agent walking around after the shooting, with no obvious signs of external injuries.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said the ICE officer who fatally shot a driver was hit by the woman’s car during an immigration-related operation and that the officer was treated for injuries.
“She hit him. He went to the hospital. A doctor did treat him. He has been released, but he’s going to spend some time with his family,” Noem told reporters.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at least two shots had been fired and the victim suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at the hospital. An investigation is being conducted by the FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, he said.
The White House declined to provide further information about how the president came to his conclusions about the incident, other than pointing to the social media posts by Trump and the Department of Homeland Security. Neither entity publicly produced evidence to support that characterization.
Noem said Wednesday evening that the ICE agent “used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues.” She described the incident as “an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents” and an act of “domestic terrorism.”
The department did not provide details to substantiate that claim.
Within hours, at least half a dozen GOP representatives and senators had amplified the Trump administration’s version of events — expressing their support for ICE agents and blaming Democratic cities for cultivating a culture dangerous to law enforcement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said there will be a full investigation into the incident and sought to blame it on rhetoric against law enforcement.
“It appears to us … that the driver of the vehicle weaponized that vehicle against law enforcement officers and against bystanders. It was a dangerous situation. People make snap judgments in those situations, and it’s a really sad outcome,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.
Some right-wing commentators called for the Democratic leaders to be removed from office, arrested, or saying they’re aiding domestic terrorism or sedition.
Democrats, meanwhile, accused the Trump administration of lying to the American people as activists nationwide began to organize demonstrations against ICE.
“Homeland Security’s description of what happened and the narrative they’re pushing clearly doesn’t match up with the videos we’re all seeing,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) said on X. “They’re asking people not to believe what we can all see with our own eyes.”
By the time the sun set Wednesday, clips of the fatal shooting had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, as Americans tried to determine for themselves whom to blame.
Jonathan Baran in San Francisco, and Brianna Tucker and Ence Morse in Washington contributed to this report.
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