Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem vowed on Sunday to send “hundreds more” federal agents to Minneapolis as thousands continue to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer last week.
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“We’re sending more officers today and tomorrow,” Noem said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “They’ll arrive — there’ll be hundreds more, in order to allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely.”
She cited the recent welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota as the reason for sending the agents, who she says will “uncover the true corruption and theft that has happened.”
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Noem’s announcement came a day after tens of thousands took to the streets of Minneapolis to protest over the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an immigration officer and the continued presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the city. Good, a mother of three and a poet, was killed in front of her partner while inside her car on Wednesday. Those protests have since spread across the country.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for ICE to “Get the f— out” of the city.
Frey has continually said that ICE agents’ presence in the city has created more chaos, fear, and danger for citizens: “Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite,” he said on Wednesday.
The White House and Noem have continued to defend the actions of ICE agent Jonathan Ross as self-defense, while Frey and other Democrats have vehemently disagreed.
“This was clearly a law enforcement action, where the officer acted on his training and defended himself and his life and his fellow colleagues,” Noem said on CNN’s State of the Union, also on Sunday. Noem blamed local leaders for fanning the flames, claiming that Good’s death is “why we need our leaders to turn down their rhetoric.”
“They’ve extremely politicized and inappropriately talked about this situation on the ground in their city. They’ve inflamed the public,” Noem said of Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “They’ve encouraged the kind of destruction and violence that we’ve seen in Minneapolis these last several days.”
Frey said Saturday that the “vast majority of community members have demonstrated peacefully,” although 30 protestors were arrested on Friday evening for mild property damage and blocking streets, according to police.
Speaking to Kristin Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Frey said he had “deep mistrust” of federal agencies looking into Good’s death and requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) allow state agencies to aid in an investigation.
Frey pointed to viral cell phone videos of Good’s interactions with immigration officers before she was shot, videos he says prove she was attempting to leave the scene rather than “run over” an officer, as President Trump and Noem have claimed.
“You don’t need to take my word for it. You don’t need to take their word for it. Watch the video,” Frey said. In the video, Good’s car can be seen reversing, her tires facing away from the officer who fired into the side of her car.
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