Moments before Renee Good was shot to death on a Minneapolis street last week, a federal agent ordered her to get out of her Honda Pilot.
Was she legally obligated to comply?
The answer is contingent on many factors, experts said, including the complex interplay of power and jurisdiction among law enforcement agencies. While Ms. Good was compelled to follow a lawful order, it is not clear whether the immigration agents on the scene were acting within their authority.
“What were the ICE officers even attempting to do?” asked Rachel Moran, an expert on police accountability at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. “There’s a couple of key questions, I think. One is, were they involved in a legitimate enforcement operation at that point? And the second is, was she actually blocking their vehicles?”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said that agents had been trying to free a vehicle that was stuck in the snow when “a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in, shouting at them and impeding law enforcement operations.”
Agents would be within their powers to take action against anyone obstructing a legitimate operation, experts said. But whether Ms. Good’s actions qualified is open to interpretation.
Video of the episode shows that Ms. Good’s Honda was blocking at least one lane of traffic, but cars were able to pass.
That raises the question, experts said, of whether the agent who asked Ms. Good to exit her car were performing what amounts to traffic enforcement, a function of the local police.
Michael Feinberg, a lawyer and former F.B.I. agent, wrote in an article for Lawfare, a legal affairs website, that according to Minnesota statute, peace officers, defined as state or local law enforcement officers, are empowered to enforce the law against stopping on a road or highway, a misdemeanor. Federal agents may serve as peace officers only at the request and under the direction of a state or local officer. (Custody of anyone they arrest, according to the law, must be turned over to a state or local officer.)
Under federal statute, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have the power to make arrests for illegal entry to the United States, federal felonies or “any offense against the United States” if it occurs in the agent’s presence.
But the agents’ newly aggressive tactics seem to reflect an expanded view of their power, said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the deputy project director on policing for the American Civil Liberties Union, raising concerns about “ICE agents who are supposed to be doing civil immigration enforcement thinking that they’re empowered to take actions like criminal law enforcement.” She added, “There are important differences on the limits of their authority that they don’t seem to be observing.”
If Ms. Good was violating traffic laws in a way that did not interfere with federal agents’ work, one option would be to call for help from the local police.
But in Minneapolis, where federal agents have lobbed tear gas at protesters and dragged a motorist from her car, collaboration among law enforcement agencies has broken down.
Protesters have demanded that police officers even arrest federal agents on charges of using excessive force. Ms. Moran said that some things that ICE agents have done, “like the deployment of chemical weapons intentionally in people’s faces, which is a violation of D.H.S.’s own policies,” could be deemed an assault.
All of which makes it difficult to assess the actions of Ms. Good. “There’s so many of these issues that need to be resolved in this global framework before we can get down to the nitty-gritty of, ‘Was it a lawful order?’” said Geoffrey Alpert, an expert on police use of force at the University of South Carolina.
Situations where officers give conflicting instructions can be particularly thorny, he said. One witness reported that Ms. Good was ordered to leave the scene before being told to get out of her S.U.V. “Had she stayed there, maybe the guy who told her to get out of there would have been upset with her,” Mr. Alpert said.
In the end, people cannot be expected to weigh the finer points of the statute books when faced with a police command. Ms. Borchetta said the A.C.L.U. advises people that “when you get an order, you should follow it.”
Not because failure to do so would be a crime. But rather, she said, “For your safety, period.”
Shaila Dewan covers criminal justice — policing, courts and prisons — across the country. She has been a journalist for 25 years.
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