The Dictatorship
ICE agent’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis woman instantly becomes politicized
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman Wednesday during an operation in Minneapolis, immediately escalating tensions over the Trump administration’s decision to send some 2,000 immigration agents into the city.
“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” an angry Mayor Jacob Frey said at an afternoon news conference. Federal agents, he said, are “sowing chaos on our streets, and in this case, quite literally killing people.”
The Minnesota Star Tribuneidentified the woman as 37-year old Renee Nicole Good. Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the outlet that her daughter was “loving, forgiving and affectionate” and that she was “probably terrified” during the encounter.
The incident, coming on the heels of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration operations in blue states and cities, immediately became politicized. After watching video of the encounter, President Donald Trump claimed the woman who was shot “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” He also said it was “hard to believe” that the ICE agent is alive and added that he is recovering at a hospital.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a Wednesday evening news conference that the woman was “blocking” officers who were attempting to dislodge their vehicle from the snow.
“ICE agents repeatedly ordered her to get out of the car and to stop obstructing law enforcement. But she refused to obey their commands,” Noem said. “She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.”
Noem said the ICE officer, “fearing for his life and the other officers around him and the safety of the public,” fired shots defensively.
Noem said the officer had been released from the hospital and was with family. “Any loss of life is a tragedy…all of us agree in this situation, it was preventable,” she said.
The incident, coming on the heels of the Trump administration’s expanded immigration operations in blue states and cities, immediately became politicized.
Democrats, however — including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, with whom Noem said she spoke — questioned Trump and Noem’s accounting of the events. Walz warned in his own press conference that Trump “would make this about me” and that the shooting was “so, so preventable” and “so unnecessary.”
Walz called on Minnesotans to remain calm and said he is prepared to activate the National Guard if needed. Police Chief Brian O’Hara toldMinneapolis his officers last month to intervene if they see ICE agents using excessive force against residents or risk losing their jobs.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said officers were “conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”
McLaughlin said the officer feared for his life and “the safety of the public.”
“He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” she said. “The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. Thankfully, the ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.”
And Stephen Millera senior presidential aide and architect of Trump’s mass deportation strategy, called video he posted of the incident “domestic terrorism.”
Local Minneapolis officials, however, feel differently.
According to Frey’s office, Minneapolis police officers responded to the reports of shots fired “just after 9:30 a.m., and found a woman with life-threatening gunshot wounds. Minneapolis firefighters removed the woman from the vehicle and immediately began lifesaving measures until paramedics could respond.” She was transported to a local hospital, where she eventually died.
Frey accused the Trump administration of trying to “spin this as an action of self-defense.”
“Having seen the video … myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit,” the mayor said. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., was similarly skeptical.
“There is no evidence that has been presented to justify this killing. [DHS] Secretary Kristi Noem is a stone-cold liar and has zero credibility. The masked ICE agent who pulled the trigger should be criminally investigated to the full extent of the law for acting with depraved indifference to human life,” Jeffries said.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris called the incident “shocking,” and said the video “makes it clear that the Trump administration’s explanation of this shooting is pure gaslighting.”
O’Hara said the woman was not the target of the law enforcement investigation, was unarmed and was shot in the head.
Bystander video verified by MS NOW clearly contradicts key parts of Trump’s description. It shows the car partially blocking a two-lane street in a snowy residential neighborhood.
The footage, which begins moments before the shooting, shows a handful of people milling about, filming the agents as they walk around and toward the vehicle. Whistles — a tactic used by “ICE observers” to warn people that agents are in the area — can be heard.
One of the officers puts his hand on the driver’s door handle and loudly repeats, “Get out of the car!”
The car briefly moves in reverse, then starts to drive off when three gunshots ring out, and the car crashes into a parked vehicle. The officer who fired his gun was standing in the street in the direction the car was facing.
The agent holding the door handle stumbles but stays on his feet as the car drives off. None of the other officers comes in contact with the car, and none appears significantly injured, if at all.
Several people at the scene are heard yelling expletives right after the shots were fired.
Residents who spoke to MS NOW at the scene said they saw what appeared to be blood on the deployed airbag on the driver’s side.
Shortly after the shooting, residents gathered around federal agents in vehicles, shouting at them and calling the location a crime scene.
The Trump administration launched a massive immigration enforcement operation in the Minneapolis area this week, deploying approximately 2,000 federal agents to the state.
Federal law enforcement officials have been sent to other Democratic-led cities over the past year, sparking fierce criticism from local lawmakers.
In October, a federal agent shot a woman five times during an immigration crackdown in Chicago in what the administration similarly characterized as a defensive act. Federal prosecutors brought assault charges against her, but moved to dismissthem after the agent’s text messages bragging about the shootingwere presented in court.
At the news conference, Frey addressed the federal immigration enforcement agency directly.
“I have a message for ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here,” he said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
___
Nnamdi Egwuonwu contributed to this report.
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
The Dictatorship
What Tom Emmer said about Somalis was racist. What’s worse is he doesn’t believe it.
ByMichael Tisserand
There was a time when President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans didn’t think House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., had a sufficient understanding of who his enemies ought to be. But in remarks he made Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, Emmer did his best to signal that Trump’s enemies are his enemies, too.
Emmer’s 11-minute talk, during which he expressed racism and transphobia and railed against abortion, also served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. The name of the state party used to be Independent-Republicansand the late U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger used to describe the state party’s worldview, without irony, as progressive Republicanism.
Emmer’s talk served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be.
That party is long gone. At Wednesday’s event, Emmer theatrically dismissed a few sheets of paper he said were his talking points and proclaimed, Trump-like, that he was going rogue. He took aim at transgender youth (“there’s a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed”), at “elite radical lefties,” at “evil Marxists,” at the media, called his state’s abortion laws “as bad as North Korea” and called the state itself the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.”
But Emmer earned some of the most enthusiastic applause in his racist rant against the state’s large Somali American population. “Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re going to call us a racist, you’re going to call us an Islamophobe,” he said, before saying, “But I’m done being careful. Even the least bit careful.”
He said, “I don’t really care where you come from. But if come to this great country, you have to understand, you’re coming here to be an American.” Somalis “don’t assimilate,” he said, “And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
Among the people who responded angrily to Emmer’s slander of Somalis was Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia. “I assimilated all the way to Congress and this idiot still tells me to go back to where I came from,” she wrote on X.
In the debacle that followed Kevin McCarthy being voted out of the House speakership in 2023, Emmer was not elected to replace him because, by MAGA standards, he was too moderate. Trump called him a “Globalist RINO” and was still fuming that after Joe Biden won the race for president in 2020, Emmer voted to certify that election.
Emmer has worked harder to be seen as MAGA since then. In December, he appeared on “Varney & Co.” on Fox Business to support an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge that made Somalis among its primary targets and became known as Operation Metro Surge. He offered up conspiracy theories and lies about Somali Americans committing 80% of the crime in the Twin Cities. He said money was being stolen from Minnesota state and federal programs to fund the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabab.
When he signed up with the so-called Sharia Free America Caucus in February, he railed against letting “anti-American ideologies take root in our communities” and said he had been fighting against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law since he was a state legislator. I was unable to find stories of Emmer as a state legislator fearmongering about Sharia law. However, in 2015, when one of Emmer’s fellow Republicans was being rightly rebuked for attending an anti-Muslim event in St. Cloud, Emmer was a voice of reason and tolerance. He wanted his constituents to know that Somali Americans were contributing to the Minnesota communities they had made home and that they were “some of the fastest-assimilating populations.”
That same year, Emmer joined then-Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democrat who’s now the state’s attorney general, to found the Congressional Somalia Caucus: to help Somali Americans here and to promote peace and stability in Somalia.
Now Ellison is taking the lead in legal challenges against the ICE assaults Emmer champions.
This is the ticket into MAGA world: an embrace of abdication of decency and a necessary rejection of the spirit of welcome and tolerance one once held.
This is the ticket into MAGA world.
In April, a west central Minnesota event called “Understanding Immigration: A Community Conversation,” included Ayan Omar, a Somali American from St. Cloud, as a speaker. She works as equity director for the public schools and has been active in interfaith dialogues in the city.
Omar spoke of coming to the U.S. as a child, learning English by watching “The Simpsons” and learning self-value by watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The message from Mr. Rogers, she said, was especially important because “I just wanted to cower and hide away because I stood out. Not only because I was a Somali-American refugee, but I was also poor.” It was learning about Frederick Douglass that inspired her to become a teacher.
What she was describing was the process of her becoming more and more American. Countless other Somali Americans have had similar experiences. OEmmer knows that.
And not so long ago, he wasn’t afraid to say it.
Michael Tisserand
Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose works include “Krazy,” a biography of cartoonist George Herriman, and Sugarcane Academy, a memoir of his family’s experiences of Hurricane Katrina. With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently writing a book about Charlie Chaplin and “The Great Dictator,” for Oxford University Press.
An appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him 16 years in prison to resentence him.
A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.
“We reject his attempts to disturb the jury’s guilty verdicts,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email that “We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”
The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.
The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed.
Weinstein, 74, still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.
In California, Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.
After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued Weinstein in civil court.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named.
Chernyshova testified that Weinstein arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.
Weinstein’s defense argued that Weinstein deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.
The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.
“The lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.
But the appeals court said in its ruling that Weinstein did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.
“Thus, there was no denial of Weinstein’s constitutional right to present a defense,” the panel wrote in its opinion.
The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.
And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults Weinstein was not charged with was appropriate, and allowed under state law.
Before his sentencing, Weinstein told the judge that this was a “made-up story” from a woman he had never met.
The Los Angeles jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.
“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Engelmayer said in his email Friday. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.
An email seeking comment from Chernyshova’s attorney was not immediately answered.
ByGarry Pierre-Pierre
One of the first people, and the very first doctor, to publicly receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States was Dr. Yves Duroseauthe chair of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
At a time when fear had emptied city streets and refrigerated trucks were lined up near hospital loading docksthat son of Haiti was a face of hope.
For Haitians, that image carried a deeper resonance. Ours is a community that America has often noticed only in moments of crisis. For once, the country was looking at a Haitian because he represented hope.
Ours is a community that America often noticed only in moments of crisis.
That memory from five and a half years ago is one reason the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians hit me so hard. Not with anger, but with deep sadness.
When I took the oath of citizenship decades ago, I believed America rewarded commitment with belonging. I still want to believe that. Thursday’s ruling suggests that, for some immigrants, the word “temporary” didn’t just describe their legal status but the nature of America’s welcome.
The first TPS recipients from Haiti arrived after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2010. Today, Haiti faces a different catastrophe. Armed gangs control much of the capitalthousands have been killed or displaced and the State Department continues to warn Americans not to travel there.
For many TPS holders, the country they fled has not recovered. In many ways, it has become even more dangerous.
They believed something basic: that the United States would not send them back to a country engulfed by political violence, armed gangs and institutional collapse. TPS was created for those for whom returning home is unsafe. That humanitarian commitment should matter just as much as the lives those TPS holders have built since arriving.
They waited for Congress to do what some members had pushed for for years: create a pathway from temporary protection to permanent belonging. Instead, the years passed. Children became adults. Mortgages were paid. Careers were built. Entire lives unfolded while Washington postponed action. Temporary Protected Status became less a bridge than a waiting room. The finish line kept moving. Now, for many, it has disappeared altogether.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Haitian nurses, home health aides and other essential workers were hailed as heroes. Their work was indispensable then, and healthcare leaders say it remains indispensable today.
This dependence is not sentimental. It is measurable. The Boston Globe, citing data from the National Domestic Workers Alliancereported that roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.
According to a report by Massachusetts lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, ending TPS for Haitians “threatens to seriously disrupt the health care, senior care and disability care workforces amid a nationwide health care crisis and persistent staffing shortages.”
Roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.
There is nothing temporary about the lives these TPS holders have built. There is nothing temporary about paying taxes for decades, buying a home, planting a garden or knowing your neighbors by name. There is nothing temporary about raising children who begin each school day by pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. There is nothing temporary about risking your life to care for strangers during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
I never imagined that, decades after taking my own oath of citizenship, I would be writing about a generation of immigrants who walked that same path with the same faith only to discover that the road ended before they reached their destination.
As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday, it must also confront a question that has shadowed much of its history: Who gets to belong?
Too often, America has answered that question by welcoming people when their labor is needed most, only to question their place later.
Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all. The people we continue to call temporary have spent years proving their commitment to this country. This ruling is bigger than Haitians or Syrians. It speaks to the covenant a nation makes with the people who answer its call during moments of need.
Though that process has never been smooth, America has always been at its best when it expanded the circle of belonging. Italians, Jews, Asians and even Black Americans born here were all told at one time that they could never fully be American. The country was not diminished by widening the definition of who belongs — it was strengthened by it.
The question is no longer whether Haitians who have their built lives here belong. They have answered that question through years of work, sacrifice and service.
The question is whether America still remembers what it means to be a country that welcomes immigrants.
The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum.
The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum. They also reflect the promises a nation makes about who belongs. After more than 16 years, the Haitians affected by Thursday’s ruling are no longer strangers passing through. They are co-workers, parishioners, homeowners and taxpayers woven into the fabric of neighborhoods from New York to Florida to Massachusetts.
Pull one thread and you do more than remove one person. You weaken the fabric itself.
Garry Pierre-Pierre
Garry Pierre-Pierre is a Pulitzer-prize winning, multimedia and entrepreneurial journalist. In 1999, he left The New York Times to launch the Haitian Times, a New York-based English-language publication serving the Haitian diaspora. He is also the co-founder of the City University Graduate School of Journalism‘s Center for Community and Ethnic Media and a senior producer at CUNY TV
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