National outcry after second shooting by US agents in two days

Washington: Two people were shot by US border patrol agents in Portland, Oregon, just a day after a woman was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis, sparking a national outcry and protests in major American cities.

US Vice President JD Vance defended the ICE agent’s actions in Minneapolis on Friday (AEDT), calling the dead woman a “deranged leftist” who had tried to run over a law enforcement officer, despite widely seen footage casting doubt on that assertion.

He also chided journalists for their coverage of the incident, accusing them of portraying 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in a sympathetic light rather than as a troublemaker whose demise was “a tragedy of her own making”.

The Minneapolis incident has shocked the country and renewed calls by Democrats and activists for ICE to withdraw from US cities. Protesters in Minneapolis were in a tense stand-off with federal agents on Thursday evening, local time, while demonstrators took to the streets from New York to Boston and Washington.

Anger was compounded when local police in Portland announced federal agents shot at a man and a woman on Thursday afternoon. They said the two people were found injured after requesting help about 5 kilometres from the shooting site, and were taken to a nearby hospital.

Confirming the incident, the Department of Homeland Security said border patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop when the driver “weaponised his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents”.

The driver of the vehicle was believed to be a “Venezuelan illegal alien” affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang, assistant DHS secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to this masthead.

“Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot,” she said. “The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene. This situation is evolving, and more information is forthcoming.”

McLaughlin later updated her statement to say the border patrol agent had fired multiple “defensive shots”.

Local authorities including Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson used the incident to renew their calls for ICE to leave Portland, at least until a full investigation took place.

“Portland is not a training ground for militarised agents,” Wilson said. “The consequences are not abstract.”

He also said the Trump administration’s version of events was not necessarily trustworthy. “There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time has long passed.”

Meanwhile, Vance used a rare appearance before reporters at the White House to double down on the administration’s claims that the ICE agent in Minneapolis acted in self-defence and was owed a “debt of gratitude” rather than being vilified.

“She was trying to ram this guy with her car. He shot back, he defended himself,” Vance said, though he later admitted he did not know what Good intended to do with her vehicle, and that she might have been panicking.

“What I am certain of is that she violated the law,” he said. “That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation. That woman is part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”

Multiple videos of the incident appear to show the mother of three beginning to drive away from the ICE agents just as one male agent fatally shoots her at close range. The agent did not appear hurt and later walked and drove from the scene, though the federal government said he was briefly taken to hospital.

Local officials, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, strongly contradicted the Trump administration’s account of Good’s death, calling it a “garbage narrative” invented to reflexively defend federal personnel.

The vice president suggested the ICE agent involved, identified as Jonathon Ross, may have been “sensitive” about Good’s actions because he sustained significant injuries after being dragged by a car during an enforcement operation last year.

WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

“That very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car, six months ago – 33 stitches in his leg. So, you think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?” Vance said.

“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace … Everybody who has been repeating the lie that this was some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her – you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Good’s death is subject to an FBI investigation, but there are concerns that the probe will be tainted by the Trump administration’s early conclusions exonerating the ICE agent.

And on Friday (AEDT), Minnesota state police said they had been blocked from investigating Good’s death after the federal US Attorney’s Office “reversed course” and decided only the FBI – a federal agency under the Trump administration’s control – would conduct the probe.

Minnesota’s Democratic Governor, Tim Walz, said local authorities must be part of the investigation. It was “very, very difficult for Minnesotans to think in any way this [investigation] is going to be fair when Kristi Noem [the secretary of Homeland Security] was judge, jury and basically executioner yesterday”, he said.

Noem had within two hours of the attack concluded that Good was committing an act of “domestic terrorism” and that the ICE agent’s actions were justified in self-defence.

On Friday, Noem denied Minnesota police had been “cut out” of the process. “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation,” she told reporters.

But the FBI’s website says state and local law enforcement agencies are not subordinate to the bureau, and that FBI and local authorities often pool resources. When George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020, just blocks from where Good was killed, the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension conducted separate, concurrent investigations.

Minneapolis remained on edge as protesters confronted law enforcement officials on the streets on Thursday, local time. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported minor scuffles in the morning, including a man and woman taken to the ground by agents, but the demonstrations remained largely peaceful.

Later in the afternoon, demonstrators were in a tense stand-off with agents near the federal Whipple Building, and Walz had put the National Guard on standby.

Civil rights lawyer and social justice advocate Nekima Levy Armstrong, who leads the Racial Justice Network in Minneapolis, said law enforcement officers were not allowed to use deadly force to prevent a person escaping or punish them for doing so, nor could it be justified after the fact by “fear-based storytelling”.

Officers were also trained not to fire into moving vehicles “except in the most extreme circumstances” where there was no alternative, Armstrong said.

“The federal government is lying about this killing,” she told a news conference.

“They are lying to control the narrative. They are lying to justify the unjustifiable. And they’re lying to shield an officer from accountability after a mother was killed. There’s video, there’s eyewitnesses, and we will not accept lies in place of justice.”

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