ICE shooting plunges Minneapolis into crisis that feels all too familiar

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MINNEAPOLIS—For months, crisis after crisis has battered this Midwestern city and state. The killing of a state legislator and her husband.

A mass shooting of Catholic school children. A sprawling fraud scandal that scuttled the governor’s re-election hopes and made the area the new center of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. On Thursday, residents awoke to the aftermath of another painful—and polarizing—event that is drawing worldwide attention: an ICE agent’s fatal shooting Wednesday of 37-year-old Renee Good, a mother of three, in a middle-class neighborhood.

For many here, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu took hold as media and law enforcement again flooded the city. Schools closed. Vigils and protests erupted, with demonstrators standing on snowbanks throughout an unusually temperate January day.

Local clergy and others gathered at the site of the shooting, struggling to make sense of the tragedy. The incident played out just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed in May 2020, a flashpoint that sparked unrest Minneapolis has spent years overcoming. “It feels like there’s some PTSD because there’s a similar trauma that comes with this," said Rev.

Nathan Melcher, a United Methodist Pastor whose parish is nearby. He stood in the wide street near where Good was killed. That street, Portland Avenue, is lined with typical Minneapolis homes with screened-in front porches and decorations in the front yard.

Now it has become a memorial for Good. Impromptu barricades block off both ends of the block. People play music and stoke fires for warmth.