The Trump administration will send “hundreds more” federal agents to Minneapolis “today and tomorrow” to support the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Sunday, days after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman there.
Ms. Noem cited a major welfare fraud scandal linked to Minnesota’s Somali community as the reason for dispatching more agents to the liberal city. A vast majority of those charged since 2022 with stealing federal dollars from a pandemic-era program for feeding children and other programs were U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization.
Still, Ms. Noem characterized the federal deployment as a mission “to uncover the true corruption and theft that has happened” during an interview on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures.” She called Minneapolis “the ground zero for stealing of taxpayer dollars and protecting criminals,” without citing specific examples.
The secretary also took aim at protests against the immigration crackdown, which have grown after the death of Renee Nicole Good, a motorist who was shot and killed during an encounter with federal agents on Wednesday.
Ms. Noem said that some nonprofits were being investigated for their funding sources, and claimed that they had trained protesters in impeding law enforcement operations and “weaponizing” vehicles against ICE agents, without offering evidence.
Democrats have assailed the Trump administration over the shooting and its efforts to vilify Ms. Good. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, accused the administration on Sunday of orchestrating a “cover-up” by refusing to work with state agencies.
“They are blocking state investigators from participating in any way in this investigation,” she said on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that she believed Ms. Noem had rushed to blame Ms. Good. Ms. Noem has accused Ms. Good of having engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Ms. Noem repeated those accusations on Fox News and in a heated exchange on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where she continued to defend the agent who shot Ms. Good as she was behind the wheel of her vehicle on a snowy Minneapolis street. Ms. Noem told CNN that Ms. Good had tried to “run over” agents with her vehicle, adding that everything she was saying had been “proven to be factual.” The investigation into Ms. Good’s death is still underway.
Ms. Noem’s statements conflict with a New York Times video analysis of the shooting, which appears to show that Ms. Good was turning away from the federal officer as he opened fire. Videos of the moments that led up to the shooting show several agents approaching Ms. Good and her wife and demanding that Ms. Good leave her vehicle. Seconds before her death, Ms. Good said to those around her, “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad,” before pulling forward and steering away from the agent who opens fire.
Ms. Noem and other members of the administration — particularly President Trump — have fiercely defended the actions of the ICE agent and have leveled accusations at Ms. Good in the days since her death.
While Tom Homan, the White House border czar and the head of ICE during Mr. Trump’s first term, called again for an investigation to play out, he, too, defended the agent’s action as self-defense.
The agent “feared for his life and took appropriate action,” Mr. Homan said on Sunday during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This officer, I think, in his mind did the right thing to save his own life and the life of others.”
Democrats have strongly objected to the administration’s immigration enforcement effort, and their response has only intensified since Ms. Good’s death.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis used expletives to urge ICE to leave his city after Ms. Good’s death, while Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, called the shooting a “heinous killing” and denounced Ms. Noem as a “stone-cold liar.”
Ms. Noem said Democrats had “politicized” the federal deployment and “inflamed the public.”
“I would encourage them to grow up, get some maturity,” Ms. Noem told CNN.
Katie Rogers contributed reporting.
Minho Kim reports on breaking news for The Times from Washington.
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