A message and flowers lie at the makeshift memorial at the scene of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 8, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Saturday urged demonstrators protesting the fatal shooting of a motorist by a U.S. immigration agent to stay peaceful, saying that any unlawful actions would play into U.S. President Donald Trump's hands.
Frey, a Democrat, cautioned them as civil liberties and migrant-rights groups prepared nationwide rallies to protest the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday. Minnesota and U.S. officials have offered starkly different accounts of the shooting.
Twenty-nine people were arrested overnight in Minneapolis as police responded to protests, including a gathering of demonstrators outside a hotel believed to be lodging a visiting contingent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, city Police Chief Brian O'Hara said.
One police officer was injured when a chunk of ice was hurled at them, O'Hara told a press conference.
DEMONSTRATIONS MOSTLY PEACEFUL
Frey, who has been critical of immigration agents and the shooting, said the demonstrations to date have remained mostly peaceful and that anyone damaging property or engaging in other unlawful activity would be arrested by police.
"We will not counter Donald Trump's chaos with our own brand of chaos," Frey said at the press conference. "He wants us to take the bait."
The fatal shooting of Good, a volunteer in a community network that tracks, monitors and records ICE operations in Minneapolis, came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to the Minnesota city in what ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the "largest DHS operation ever."
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a "reckless" example of "governance by reality TV."
More than 200 law enforcement officers were deployed Friday night to control protests that led to $6,000 in damage at the Depot Renaissance Hotel and failed attempts by some demonstrators to enter the Hilton Canopy Hotel, believed to house ICE agents, the City of Minneapolis said in a statement.
O’Hara said some in the crowd scrawled graffiti and damaged windows at the Depot Renaissance Hotel. He said the gathering at the Hilton Canopy Hotel began as a “noise protest” but escalated as more than 1,000 demonstrators converged on the site.
"We initiated a plan and took our time to de-escalate the situation, issued multiple warnings, declaring an unlawful assembly, and ultimately then began to move in and disperse the crowd," O'Hara said.
CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DENIED ENTRY TO ICE FACILITY
Three Minnesota congressional Democrats showed up at a regional ICE headquarters near Minneapolis on Saturday morning, where protesters have clashed with federal agents this week, but were denied access. Legislators called the denial illegal.
"We made it clear to ICE and DHS that they were violating federal law," U.S. Representative Angie Craig told reporters as she stood outside the Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul with Representatives Kelly Morrison and Ilhan Omar.
Federal law prohibits DHS from blocking members of Congress from entering ICE detention sites, but DHS has increasingly restricted such oversight visits, prompting confrontations with Democratic lawmakers.
"It is our job as members of Congress to make sure those detained are treated with humanity, because we are the damn United States of America," Craig said.
Referencing the damage and protests at Minneapolis hotels overnight, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the congressional Democrats were denied entry to ensure "the safety of detainees and staff, and in compliance with the agency's mandate." She said DHS policies require members of Congress to notify ICE at least seven days in advance of facility visits.
Minnesota became a major flashpoint in the administration's efforts to deport millions of immigrants months before the Good shooting, with Trump and members of his administration criticizing its Democratic leaders amid a massive welfare fraud scandal involving some members of the large Somali-American community there.
Frey has blamed ICE agents for sowing chaos in the city, telling them to "get the f*** out of Minneapolis" in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday's shooting.
Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. Using language similar to its description of the Minneapolis incident, DHS said the driver had tried to "weaponize" his vehicle and run over agents.
The two DHS-related shootings this week have drawn thousands of protesters to the streets of Minneapolis, Portland and other U.S. cities, with many more demonstrations under the banner "ICE Out For Good" planned for Saturday and Sunday.
Protest organizers said more than 1,000 weekend events have been planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of ICE agents. The rallies were being organized by a coalition of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of "No Kings" protests against Trump last year.
(Reporting by Renee Hickman in Minneapolis, Ryan Jones in Toronto and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Joseph Ax and Maria Tsvetkova in New York, Ernest Scheyder in Houston and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by William Mallard, Sergio Non, Diane Craft, Rod Nickel)
