The US president has issued the latest threat to a Midwestern state where protests continue following the killing of a woman by ICE agents.
President Donald Trump said there will be a “day of reckoning and retribution” in Minnesota, amid days of anger and protests after an immigration officer shot and killed a woman in the state’s largest city, Minneapolis.
President Trump did not provide further details about the statement, which was released at the end of a lengthy article posted to the President’s Truth social account on Tuesday.
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The apparent threat represented the latest pledge to slam the Midwestern state following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week.
The administration promised on Monday to send hundreds more ICE agents to Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, federal agents are already dwarfed by local law enforcement, and city and state leaders are calling it a dangerous escalation.
“All the patriots at ICE want to do is remove them from their neighborhoods and send them back to the prisons and mental hospitals where they came from, most of them aliens who entered the United States illegally by taking advantage of Sleepy Joe Biden’s horrible open borders policy,” Trump said, referring to his predecessor, US President Joe Biden.
“Fear not, great people of Minnesota, the day of retribution is coming!” he said.
The phrase was quickly cited in a post to X by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement within the United States.
Later Tuesday, a federal judge was scheduled to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by the Minnesota attorney general and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which argue that the proliferation of immigration agents oversteps the state’s constitutionally protected rights and violates residents’ free speech rights.
“People have been racially profiled, harassed, terrorized and assaulted,” the state’s attorney general said in a statement when filing the lawsuit.
“Schools are on lockdown, businesses are forced to close, and Minnesota State Police are spending countless hours responding to the chaos ICE is causing.”
“The federal invasion of the Twin Cities must stop, so today I am suing the Department of Homeland Security to end it.”
continuing anger
There have been daily protests across the state since Goode was killed during a police raid in Minneapolis.
Shortly after the shooting, the Trump administration labeled Goode a “domestic terrorist,” while claiming the officer was acting in self-defense after the 37-year-old woman “weaponized her vehicle.”
Widely circulated video evidence quickly cast doubt on their claims, with many observers saying the footage appeared to show Good fleeing the scene in a Honda Pilot SUV when agents opened fire. Questions have also been raised about the actions of the agents involved, including the course of action that appeared to escalate the situation.
Local officials last week criticized the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s unconventional move to block the state’s independent law enforcement agency from participating in the investigation into Goode’s murder. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the move, coupled with comments from the Trump administration, raises questions about the integrity of the conclusions reached.
On Tuesday, the UN Human Rights Council also called for a “prompt, independent and transparent” investigation into the incident.
Before Goode’s killing, the Trump administration had increasingly focused on allegations of injustice in Minnesota’s large Somali-American community, sending 2,000 immigration officials to the state, sometimes using racist rhetoric.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it is revoking so-called Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalia. This is a special designation that protects individuals from deportation due to dangerous conditions in their home country.
In a statement on X, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said the move means Somalis enrolled in TPS must leave the country by March 27.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the move as “the latest bigoted attack against the Somali community.”
