Aggressive actions of ICE deepen cracks in US society

Beefed up by US President Donald Trump's administration to carry out mass deportations, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has deeply divided the United States in recent weeks through its aggressive military-style operations, often performed by armed masked agents in unmarked vehicles, experts and analysts said.

Public anger over the agency's methods rocketed on Jan 7 after an ICE agent shot dead Renee Good, a US citizen and 37-year-old mother, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the time, Good was taking part in a neighborhood patrol organized by local activists to track and monitor ICE activities.

Bystander videos showed ICE officers approaching Good's SUV as the vehicle appeared to be moving away and forward. Officer Jonathan Ross backed off and fired multiple shots as the SUV started moving.

Hours after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good used the vehicle as a weapon to hit the officer and characterized Good's act as "domestic terrorism".

US President Donald Trump called Good "a professional agitator" who "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense".

However, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey demanded in crude language that ICE leave the city, and added: "This was a federal agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying."

In a Senate session, Steve Cohen, a Democratic Representative from Tennessee and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, called Good's shooting "clearly unjustified homicide".

"The American public is not the enemy," Cohen said. "This is a war against America and against due process and against justice."

Joe Rogan, a popular podcaster who had endorsed Trump in 2024, said, "To watch someone shoot a US citizen, especially a woman, in the face … it just looked horrific to me".

Various polls showed that the majority of Americans — about 53 percent — viewed the shooting as unjustified, with only 35 percent viewing it as justified.

However, between the two major political parties — 77 percent of Republicans saw the shooting as justified, while 92 percent of Democrats said it was unjustified.

Homeland Security announced more than two weeks ago the launch of "the largest immigration enforcement operation ever by the agency" — with 2,000 federal agents sent to the Minneapolis area for a crackdown tied to fraud allegations involving Somali residents.

The surge in heavily armed officers from ICE and ‍Border Patrol has since grown to nearly 3,000, dwarfing the ranks of local police officers in the area, The Associated Press reported.