Tensions between Minnesota and federal officials have deepened over a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer’s fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis.
State and federal officials have offered starkly different accounts of the shooting, in which an ICE agent shot US citizen Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in a residential neighbourhood.
The incident on drew condemnation from local officials and sparked widespread protests in the state and beyond.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said on Thursday it had initially agreed with the FBI to conduct a joint investigation into the shooting, but that the federal agency had “reversed course” and taken sole control of the probe.
The decision, according to the BCA’s superintendent, Drew Evans, means the state bureau will no longer have access to the scene evidence, case materials or interviews.
“As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation,” Evans said.
Protests have taken place at the scene of the shooting and elsewhere in Minneapolis. Source: Getty / Star Tribune
Keith Ellison, the state’s Democratic attorney general, told CNN that the FBI’s decision was “deeply disturbing” and said state authorities could investigate with or without the cooperation of the federal government.
He added that the evidence he has seen, including some that has not yet been made public, indicates that state charges are a possibility.
US Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in New York that the BCA was not “cut out” but did not have jurisdiction.
Democratic Minnesota governor Tim Walz said at a press conference that any federal investigation that proceeded without state involvement would likely be seen as a “whitewash”.
The FBI is investigating the fatal shooting in Minneapolis, a major city in the state of Minnesota. Source: Getty / Stephen Maturen
“And I say that only because people in positions of power … from the president to the vice president to Kristi Noem have already passed judgement and told you things that are verifiably false,” he said.
The FBI declined to comment on the BCA statement.
The ICE agent who shot Good was among 2,000 federal officers that President Donald Trump’s administration had announced it was deploying to the Minneapolis area in what the Department of Homeland Security described as the “largest DHS operation ever.”
DHS officials, including Noem, defended the shooting as self-defense and accused the woman of trying to ram agents in an act of “domestic terrorism”.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, called that assertion “bulls–t” and “garbage” based on bystander videos taken of the incident that appeared to contradict the government’s account.
Both Frey and Walz have called on Trump, a Republican, to withdraw federal agents from the city, saying their presence is sowing chaos in the streets.
But the New York Times reported that the administration was deploying more than 100 additional Customs and Border Patrol personnel from other cities in the wake of the shooting.
