Donald Trump has defended his administration’s increasingly violent immigration crackdown, describing the 37-year-old woman killed by federal agents as likely a “wonderful person” whose “tough” actions justified a lethal response.
Trump’s comments, made during an interview with CBS News after his visit to a Ford factory in Detroit, came amid rising tensions between federal and local officials in Minneapolis after an ICE agent shot dead Renee Good at the wheel of her SUV on a residential street in Minneapolis last week.
The killing set off nationwide protests and, led to the resignations of a half-dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota, who objected to the justice department’s handling of the investigation into the killing.
In the interview, the CBS anchor, Tony Dokoupil, said he had spoken to Good’s father, a strong Trump supporter who was “heartbroken” over his daughter’s death, about the administration’s characterization of Good as a domestic terrorist. Asked what he would say to the father, Trump said: “I would bet you that she, under normal circumstances, was a very solid, wonderful person. But, you know, her actions were pretty tough.”
Trump, the vice-president JD Vance and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem have repeatedly said the agent was acting in self-defense. “There are a couple versions of that tape that are very, very bad,” Trump told CBS, and made the claim that videos capturing the shooting from various angles “can be viewed two ways”.
Video analysis of the footage shows that Good’s vehicle was turning away from the officer as he opens fire.
The administration characterized the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism”, accusing Good of being a “professional agitator”. Video evidence and local officials have sharply contested that narrative. Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, described the killing as a reckless use of power and told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis”. The administration has responded by expanding its enforcement operation in the Twin Cities as part of a sweeping deportation campaign that has largely targeted the Somali community.
The administration’s intensifying focus on Minnesota follows fraud investigations into pandemic-era meal programs that led to felony charges against dozens of people, many of Somali origin. Trump has used the scandal to justify an enforcement surge and used xenophobic language to attack Somali Americans as “garbage”, stating: “We don’t want them in our country.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it would end temporary protected status for Somalis in March, effectively forcing as many as 2,400 people out of the US. In his racist rant last month, Trump referred to Somalia as “barely a country”.
Meanwhile, the justice department has signaled it will not open a criminal civil rights investigation into Good’s death – a sharp break from historical precedent. The administration has further fueled the fire by blocking state investigators from accessing evidence, asserting that Minnesota has “no jurisdiction” over the killing of its own citizen by a federal agent.
