The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the federal immigration agent who killed a woman in Minneapolis Wednesday had been “fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public” when he shot the woman.
Local and state officials immediately cast doubt on the DHS narrative, based on bystander videos of the shooting. The debate recalls claims from DHS in the aftermath of two federal agent-involved shootings that took place during the 64-day “Operation Midway Blitz” that rocked Chicago and its suburbs for much of the fall and early winter.
In both cases, the feds alleged that the agents who fired on Marimar Martinez and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez had been acting in self-defense. And in both cases, video footage and discovery materials later poked holes in officials’ claims about agents’ justification for lethal force.
On Wednesday, DHS said the shooting victim in Minneapolis had been trying to run over agents with her car. DHS made nearly identical allegations about Martinez, a 30-year-old teacher’s assistant shot on Oct. 4 by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park.
At the time of the shooting, DHS called Martinez a “domestic terrorist” who used her car as a weapon against agents. On Wednesday, DHS said the woman killed in Minneapolis had “weaponized her vehicle” in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
In late November, a federal judge dismissed charges against Martinez in one of the highest-profile criminal cases against protesters to disintegrate at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
“Today’s tragic shooting was all too predictable based on the reckless conduct we have seen ICE officers exhibit in Chicago, Minneapolis and across the country,” Martinez said in a statement Wednesday released through her attorney, Christopher Parente.
Parente, a former federal prosecutor, said the Minneapolis shooting showed that “this is going to keep happening” as federal forces used to working at the border fan out into American cities.
While his client had survived, he said, in Minneapolis, the situation “ended much more tragically.”
“Unfortunately I think this is the beginning and not the end of these kinds of events,” he said.
“Minneapolis is the next city, as this keeps going across the country,” he said. “These agents aren’t trained for this.”
Unlike the Minneapolis incident, the shooting of Martinez was not caught on any bystander or surveillance video.
One of the agents in the back seat of the car was wearing a body camera that captured a portion of what led up to Martinez’s shooting, however U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis last month refused requests by the Tribune and other media outlets to make the video public.
In the Villegas-Gonzalez shooting, agents shot and killed the a 38-year-old Mexican citizen and single father during a Sept. 12 traffic stop. Officials alleged that Villegas-Gonzalez was fleeing from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in west suburban Franklin Park and had “refused to follow law enforcement commands and drove his car” at officers, striking one of the ICE agents and dragging him “a significant distance.”
“Fearing for his life, the officer discharged his firearm and struck the subject,” the statement continued.
But body-worn camera footage from the Franklin Park Police Department shows that the agents, one of whom was originally described as critically injured, described their bloody hands and knees to responding police officers as “nothing major” just minutes after the shooting.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly referenced Villegas-Gonzalez’ death in a statement in which she “urge(d) the truth to come to light.”
“The city of Chicago knows all too well that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem only lies,” said Kelly, a Chicago Democrat running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. “The Minneapolis Mayor has already said that video disputes Secretary Noem’s claims.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters Wednesday that federal claims of self-defense against the woman were untrue.
Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bull—-,” Frey said.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, also a primary candidate in the race to replace Durbin, condemned the shooting as “a senseless tragedy” and said he planned to demand “full answers” from Trump administration officials, who have made crackdowns on immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status a centerpiece of the president’s second term.
“This is Donald Trump’s America: a woman is dead because ICE is operating with impunity in our neighborhoods,” Krishnamoorthi’s statement read. “When federal agents are unleashed without restraint or oversight, the consequences are deadly—and the responsibility for this killing is on their hands.”
As news of the shooting made its way across the country, Chicago area activists who spent much of the fall organizing against the federal immigration enforcement surge announced actions at the Little Village Arch — which saw a number of high profile confrontations between neighbors and federal agents throughout the blitz — and in west suburban Oak Park.
“As I’ve said time and time again, the Trump Administration’s militarized immigration raids are dangerous political theater meant to spread fear and advance an anti-immigrant agenda,” Durbin said in a statement. “This loss of life is tragic, heartbreaking, and enraging, but I encourage all protestors to remain peaceful.”
Durbin called for a “full investigation.”
“Video of the incident starkly contradicts DHS’s narrative, and the fact that DHS has jumped to characterize this shooting in ‘self-defense’ is rushed, at best, and a lie, at worst,” he said. “In a November hearing challenging the treatment of press and protestors by federal immigration agents, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said that their ‘use of force shocks the conscience’ and ‘this conduct shows no sign of stopping.’ And now their use of force has led to another shooting and another death. This must come to an end.”
Chicago Tribune’s Jason Meisner contributed.
