Motor vehicles have become the tool of choice for activists looking to hinder Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests.
They are using vehicles to block streets, bird-dog officers driving to or from an arrest, seemingly trying to force accidents and, in some cases, colliding with federal officers or agents or their vehicles.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the department has tallied 66 vehicular attacks since President Trump took office last year. It tallied just two during the same time frame of the previous year.
Experts said tragedy was inevitable. It happened this week in Minneapolis, where an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, who had been partially blocking a street with her SUV and then fled, heading at the officer who opened fire on her.
Multiple videos of the shooting posted to social media ignited a feverish debate over whether the shooting was justified.
The videos show a maroon SUV blocking part of the snowy road that federal officers were using. The federal officers were in a pickup truck equipped with emergency flashing lights in the grille and along the sides.
SEE ALSO: Minnesota’s state investigators withdraw from probe into ICE shooting
The videos show two officers leaving the truck, approaching the driver’s door of the SUV and ordering the woman to exit. Another officer approaches from a different direction to stand in front of the vehicle, holding what appears to be a cellphone, recording the interaction.
As one officer reaches to open the door, the SUV backs up and then lurches forward, with one tire seeming to slip slightly on the snow. The officer in front draws his handgun as the SUV heads toward him. The front corner of the vehicle appears to have made contact with that officer, who opened fire. Three gunshots can be heard.
Another vehicle attack happened Thursday in Portland, Oregon. Homeland Security officials said agents were trying to arrest an illegal immigrant who turned his vehicle on them, trying to hit them.
One agent fired into the vehicle, striking a man and woman who were rushed to the hospital. Federal officials described the shooting as defensive.
Ms. Noem said the Minneapolis shooting was also justified because the woman turned her vehicle into a dangerous weapon.
“This vehicle was used to hit this officer. It was used as a weapon,” she said. “This law enforcement officer followed his training, and he defended and acted in defense of his life and those around him.”
Vice President J.D. Vance concurred.
“The reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car, and that guy acted in self-defense,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accused federal officials of rushing to a conclusion without all the facts. He urged Minnesota residents to wait for the results of an official investigation, even as he questioned the federal government’s ability to lead an impartial probe.
“It feels very, very difficult that we will get a fair outcome,” he said.
David Harris, who studies police use of force as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said vehicles can be considered deadly weapons if they are used “with an obvious intent to do damage or injure” or driven so recklessly that they endanger someone.
That wasn’t the case here, he said.
“This was an unnecessary shooting, and in my view does not comply with the Supreme Court’s rule that the use of force, especially deadly force, be reasonable,” Mr. Harris told The Washington Times by email. “The driver’s speed and direction were such that any harm to the officer was easily avoidable by the officer simply moving to his right, as the driver continued a slow movement to the right.”
He said best-practice police training would instruct the officer not to put himself in a position where he could be endangered by the vehicle.
Jonathan Fahey, a former federal prosecutor and senior Homeland Security Department official in the first Trump administration, said the woman was endangering the officer’s life.
“The woman was told, given an order to get out of the car. She was not free to leave under the law,” he said. “She was fleeing at that point. The officer had every right to get in front of the car. And when she accelerates the car, he was in danger.
“The car is a deadly weapon regardless of the intention of the driver,” Mr. Fahey said.
He compared the incident to a traffic stop by a local police officer. He said a motorist doesn’t have the right to ignore a command just because they believe the stop was unjustified.
“ICE has a job to do. You might disagree, but it’s legitimate. They’re enforcing laws passed by Congress,” he said.
Dean Golemis, a longtime police officer who now conducts training as head of Global Security and Investigative Services, said the officer faced a terrible decision to either get injured or run over, or to shoot.
He said Ms. Good had refused a law enforcement order to exit her SUV and was attempting to flee.
“She knew the officer was standing right in front of her, and she made the conscious decision to go forward,” he said.
Mr. Golemis said the context also matters, particularly when federal officers are deployed to a tense situation. Government officials said the officers had faced harassment throughout the morning.
“I’ve been in riots — 99% of the world has not,” Mr. Golemis said. “When you’re standing out here, and there’s a crowd of people out there throwing snowballs, throwing rocks at you, bottles, cursing you, you are on edge. The restraint these agents have shown is incredible. It’s a very scary situation for them.”
The officer who shot the woman was struck by a fleeing Mexican illegal immigrant last year, federal authorities said.
In that incident, in Bloomington, Minnesota, the officer had his arm inside the window of the man’s vehicle when the migrant began to drive. The officer was dragged 50 yards.
Homeland Security’s use of force policy, updated in 2023, forbids firing into a vehicle to disable it. Firing at the operator of the vehicle can be justified “to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject where the [law enforcement officer] has a reasonable belief that the subject poses a significant threat of death or serious physical harm to the LEO or others and such force is necessary to prevent escape.”
That contrasts with the Justice Department’s policy, which forbids firing at a moving vehicle unless it is being operated in a way that could “cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.”
The last time an immigration use-of-force incident drew this kind of attention was in Texas in 2021, when Border Patrol agents on horseback were seen in photos corralling migrants trying to illegally enter the U.S. by wading across the Rio Grande.
In that incident, it was Biden officials who were quick to judge. They accused the agents of whipping — or, in the words of President Biden, “strapping” — the migrants, mostly Haitians. Vice President Kamala Harris compared it to the whipping of slaves.
A photographer who captured the images, though, said he didn’t see anybody being whipped. A full investigation, belatedly made public in 2022, concluded that no migrants were whipped, though it faulted several agents for using inappropriate, derogatory words.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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