JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Yesterday's deadly shooting in Minneapolis is raising questions about the use of force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in her vehicle while the agency was conducting an immigration enforcement operation in the city. She is not the first person killed by immigration agents over the past year of the Trump administration. NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán joins us now to tell us more. Hi there.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Hey.
SUMMERS: Sergio, what have you learned about what happened in Minneapolis?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Yeah, we know there's an ongoing federal investigation and we know a bit more about what happened yesterday, Juana. So Vice President JD Vance says immigration agents were conducting an enforcement operation going door to door to find undocumented immigrants, which is unusual. And there are still conflicting interpretations of what happened or who is to blame. But the FBI took over the investigation, pushing out the state agency in charge of investigating these types of incidents.
SUMMERS: And that detail seems significant here - of the FBI taking over. What makes this case stand out?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Well, multiple things, but I think the big one is that the person shot and killed in this case - Renee Good - was a U.S. citizen who was not the subject of any law enforcement investigation. There's also a lot of video evidence of this incident, yet there are important details that we don't know yet. For instance, videos show Good's car was perpendicular in the street. DHS says she was impeding agents. But a witness told NPR Good was there as a legal observer, although Good's mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter was not an observer nor a protester. But we do know that there were protesters in the street.
SUMMERS: And we have seen ICE agents in the past engage with protesters besides arresting immigrants. Has that been their role in the past?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: ICE agents are not trained to do crowd control. That is not their role. Here's John Sandweg, who served as ICE's acting director during the Obama administration.
JOHN SANDWEG: The way in which this administration is deploying the agents, the way in which - you know, and especially with tasking the agents with being, you know, the front line on the crowd control, you know, you're creating a toxic stew there.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: He says this shows how Trump's deployment of ICE puts both the public and the agents at risk.
SUMMERS: And as we mentioned, Renee Good is not the first person to be involved in a violent incident during the Trump administration, right?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Right. Look, Juana, it's no secret the Trump administration has pushed for an aggressive crackdown on immigration - legal and illegal. And you're right, we've seen shootings by ICE agents. In fact, The Trace - a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on gun violence - has identified at least 14 shootings in ICE raids since January of last year.
Now, NPR hasn't independently confirmed all of these shootings, but we've reported on some of them. Chicago has seen some of the most high-profile shootings. Last year, a Mexican immigrant was killed after attempting to drive away from immigration agents. Also last year in Chicago, agents fired at a woman while she was still in her car, injuring her. Here's Sandweg, the former acting ICE director, again.
SANDWEG: Remember, ICE has been in operation for almost 20 years now - a little over 20 years, I think, right? And during that time, they've made millions of arrests. And we really haven't seen anything in those 20 years like we've been seeing with this administration. And it's a direct by-product of this kind of - these shifting tactics that we saw, you know, really beginning in March, where the administration started, you know, promoting and these surges of agents and for these very flashy, high-profile operations in cities.
SUMMERS: Sergio, seems like the Trump administration's response to yesterday's fatal shooting in Minneapolis is just one piece of a bigger picture.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Right. The Trump administration hasn't shied away from promoting its operations in cities across the country. And they're fiercely defending the agent that was accused of shooting Renee Good and have vowed to continue their immigration crackdown as well.
SUMMERS: NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, thanks.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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