What both sides get wrong about the Minneapolis ICE shooting

American Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Wednesday morning. The reaction online has been alarming, from both sides of the aisle.

Footage shows two officers approaching a car, parked horizontally across a suburban street, and telling the driver to exit. One officer stands at the side of the car, trying to open the driver-side door. When the car begins to move suddenly in his direction, the second officer, standing in front of the car, fires multiple shots, one of which penetrated the front windscreen. The car veers off down the street before crashing into a parked car and a power pole. The driver, who has since been identified as 37-year-old mother-of-three Renee Nicole Macklin Good, was found with a single gunshot wound to the head, and pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

The context of the killing is significant. Local residents had been protesting against federal immigration enforcement for days, following what the Department of Homeland Security described as its largest ‘immigration-enforcement operation ever’ in the city. It followed allegations of industrial-scale fraud at daycare centres run by local Somali residents. The street where the shooting occurred is little more than a kilometre from where George Floyd was murdered by police six years ago – an act that sparked the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Much as Floyd’s death did, the shooting on Wednesday has split America along partisan lines. Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem said that the driver killed on Wednesday had engaged in ‘domestic terrorism’, and claimed the officer had acted in self-defence in firing at her. The Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, dismissed this as ‘bullshit’. Protests have erupted on the streets of Minneapolis, demanding that ICE agents leave the state.

The commentariat is also split. Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire posted that ‘an easy way not to get shot by a federal agent is to refrain from hitting them with your car’. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, claimed that the ‘Democrat Party is committed to inciting violent insurrection’. Meanwhile, those on the left are calling for the officer to be arrested for murder, while the ICE agency has been called Trump’s ‘Gestapo’.

To politicise this killing so rashly is a grave mistake. Minnesota allows the use of force in self-defence when a person reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent imminent injury or death. The force used must be proportional to the threat. While many commentators are claiming that the footage is clear-cut, it isn’t. On both sides, people are seeing what they want to see.

This mindset is producing crazy arguments in each camp. Claiming that there are ‘consequences’ to driving away from ICE officers is effectively saying that the woman deserved to be killed for failing to stop. This is obviously wrong. No ‘conservative’ should be justifying this killing on the basis that the officer was entitled to summarily end the life of the driver, with no due process whatsoever. On the other hand, claims that this was a cold-hearted execution seem to ignore the fact that the woman suddenly accelerated a large car in the direction of the officer. Evidence may yet come to light that she posed a significant threat to law-enforcement officers. We simply do not know, because the full picture is yet to emerge.

There are some in the UK who are saying that this would ‘never happen here’. That’s it’s a product of America’s more militarised police, or of Trump’s alleged fascism. This is also rubbish. Anyone driving away at speed from armed officers – or in their direction – in the UK is taking a significant risk. In fact, this Minneapolis case has similarities with that of Chris Kaba, who in 2022 drove his car towards armed police officers, before he was fatally shot. This also split commentators in the UK along similar culture-war lines. The officer was eventually exonerated, as Kaba clearly posed a threat.

When people are killed by the state, both sides of the political divide should call for calm. A fair investigation of all the circumstances is vital to achieving a just outcome. Depressingly, neither side in the US seems interested in fairness or justice. Instead, both sides are eager to weaponise this tragic incident against their political opponents. It is deeply inhumane.

What’s more, an incident like this has the potential to lead to significant unrest. That’s what makes the reaction to these killings so dangerous. America can ill afford a repeat of the violence of 2020.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.