Rampant fraud committed by Minnesota’s sizable Somali immigrant population prompted the White House to order immigration raids in Minneapolis. Like many operations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the past year, the Minneapolis raids were met with violent resistance: protests in the streets quickly became riots as leftist activists attempted to assault ICE agents. One assault attempt proved fatal. On Wednesday, a woman used her car to block ICE agents. When confronted and told to exit her vehicle, she accelerated and hit an officer, who shot her through the windshield and killed her.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defended the shooting as an act of self-defense. “An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” the agency’s social media account clarified. “The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement who are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem classified the female driver’s actions as “an act of domestic terrorism,” commending the ICE agent who “acted quickly, and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him.” In a subsequent press conference, Noem lamented, “Any loss of life is a tragedy, and I think all of us can agree that in this situation it was preventable.” She added, “I encourage the American people at this time to pray for [the injured ICE agent] but also to pray for the deceased’s family and her loved ones.”

“Today alone in this country, there have been four different domestic terrorist attacks on federal officers by the ramming of vehicles. Three of them happened here in Minneapolis. We’ve seen over 100 of these vehicle-rammings happen in just recent weeks,” Noem emphasized. She also shared that the ICE agent who shot the female driver had previously been run over and dragged through the streets by an anti-ICE rioter in June and “sustained injuries at that time as well.”

The deceased female driver has been identified as 37-year-old Renee Good, a Colorado native who only recently moved to Minneapolis with her wife, who was one of several people filming the altercation and Good’s death. After Good was shot, the woman who identified herself as Good’s wife was seen on camera faulting herself. “I made her come down here, it’s my fault,” the woman said. “They just shot my wife.”

President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he had reviewed the footage of the shooting, which he described as “a horrible thing to watch.” He further asserted that “The woman screaming,” presumably referring to Good’s wife, “was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.” The president said that he was amazed that the ICE agent survived being hit by the car before proceeding to fault Democrats and their anti-ICE rhetoric for the increase in violent attacks against ICE agents. “[T]he reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE,” he asserted. “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!”

In a press conference following the shooting, Governor Tim Walz (D) announced that he is planning to mobilize the Minnesota National Guard, although it was unclear whether he intended the soldiers to serve as crowd control in case of further riots or as opponents of federal law enforcement. “We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict,” the governor claimed. “And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.”

“From here on, I have a very simple message: We do not need any further help from the federal government. To Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, you’ve done enough,” Walz stated. “I’ve issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary,” he added. “And these National Guard troops are our National Guard troops. They’re teachers in your community. They’re business owners. They’re construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight.” The Democratic governor, who announced earlier this week that he will not seek reelection, characterized anti-ICE protests as “a patriotic duty at this point in time.” When asked if the National Guard will be “deployed against federal agents and insurgents,” Walz responded, “Well, I said this yesterday, we’ve never been at war with our federal government.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) also hosted a press conference responding to the shooting. “To ICE, get the f*** out of Minneapolis,” the progressive mayor said. He continued, “Somebody is dead. That’s on you. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali immigrant and among the most vocal of Trump’s opponents on immigration issues, condemned the immigration raids as “state-sanctioned violence,” further averring that the ICE agent’s use of force Wednesday constituted “murder” and that claims of self-defense are “delusional.” Minneapolis City Councilman Jason Chavez (D) similarly referred to the Trump administration’s self-defense justification as “making up fantasies,” suggesting that the ICE agents could have simply moved out of the way of the SUV speeding towards them. He quipped, “The ICE agent did not have to murder somebody today. They could have just moved out the way.”

ICE agents have been conducting immigration raids across the country, ever since Trump returned to the White House nearly one year ago, but DHS surged an additional 2,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis this week in the midst of an ongoing, widespread fraud scandal centered on Minnesota’s sizable Somali immigrant population. The billions of dollars of fraud committed has grabbed national headlines, resulting in Walz’s decision to terminate his reelection bid and serving as the catalyst for numerous investigation.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hosted a hearing Wednesday, questioning Minnesota lawmakers on the extent of the fraud and how that fraud could have been permitted. Witnesses identified at least $9 billion that had been stolen through fraud, with Somali immigrants scamming welfare programs intended for hungry children, autistic children, and low-income households and individuals, in addition to defrauding programs like Medicare and Medicaid and COVID-19 relief funds. Republican state representatives Kristin Robbins, Walter Hudson, and Marion Rarick testified that fraud allegations dated as far back as 2011, but that Democratic officials, including Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, silenced and retaliated against whistleblowers and covered up for fraudsters. Hudson pointed to the abuse of day care funds as symptomatic of the fraud epidemic.

“The recent focus on child care fraud is not an isolated scandal,” Hudson told federal legislators. “It is the latest manifestation of a pattern that has repeated itself for decades across different programs, populations, and funding streams.” He pointed to a bombshell state audit conducted by the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor. That report raised serious concerns over the abuse of the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration (BHA) and its grant program. According to the report, BHA handed out nearly $430 million to 830 organizations between July 1, 2022, and December 31, 2024, failing to keep track of how those funds were spent. Auditors discovered progress reports were missing, as was evidence of mandatory monitoring visits to grantee organizations. Furthermore, auditors seemingly found backdated information and reports and newly-created documentation that had not existed prior to the audit.

Rarick informed the Oversight Committee that Minnesota Democrats had repeatedly attempted to block auditors and had even threatened auditors in some cases. “The most severe one was that they would be fired with cause so they couldn’t have unemployment insurance, that they would be blacklisted from all state agencies [including] Hennepin County, Ramsey County. As you know, those are Democrat-run,” the Republican state legislator testified. She shared that the Minnesota Department of Human Services has largely ignored fraud and has instead “focused its surveillance on employees,” generating a climate of fear within the state agency’s ranks. Employees “have explained that they live in a constant state of fear of retaliation,” Rarick confirmed, noting that the number of state whistleblowers has increased from less than 500 Department of Human Services employees in January of 2025 to over 1,000 state employees across multiple agencies as of 2026.

State employees have not only been threatened with job termination, but some have even reported veiled threats against their families and their children, Rarick shared. In other instances, employees reported that their emails and chat messages have been monitored, with state agencies flagging words like “fraud,” “double-billing,” and “overpayments.” She also pointed to an episode in which Walz’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan (D), publicly ridiculed whistleblowers at a Health and Human Services equity conference, referring to those reporting fraud as “weirdos and losers sitting in their mother’s basement.” Rarick charged that Walz himself “absolutely knew” about the widespread fraud and embezzlement his administration was permitting and facilitating.

Following the hearing, Rep Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said that she has “enough evidence” to suggest that both Walz and Ellison were “knowingly complicit in a Somali fraud scheme in Minnesota.” She accordingly referred both Democratic officials to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. “May justice be swift. The American people are tired of being taken advantage of.”