Transcription
By now, you have no doubt seen many of the scenes from Minneapolis. Immigration agents demanding proof of citizenship, even from some American citizens. Protesters swarming as agents make arrests. The fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer.
This past week, we went to Minneapolis and spoke with two men at the center of the crisis. The chief of police and the head of ICE's deportation operation. Both veteran law enforcement officers with two very different views of what is unfolding.
Tonight, there are 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents in the Minneapolis area. That's nearly five times the number of police on the city's force, making it the largest ever deployment of federal immigration officers to an American city.
One week after an ICE officer shot Renee Good, this was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis. Federal immigration agents facing off against angry protesters. It is exactly what Minneapolis police chief Brian O'Hara feared.
"He's been tasked with rebuilding trust between the community and police in the wake of George Floyd's murder nearly 6 years ago."
"We're in this 2020 moment where all these tensions have been building. And I'm afraid we're going to have another moment where it all explodes."
Late Wednesday night, we witnessed the anger ourselves.
"It's not a good PLACE TO BE, BRO."
"OUT OF HERE."
"LEAVE. LEAVE. GO HOME. LEAVE."
We are just hours after meeting with the police chief here in Minneapolis where he told us that tensions were so high he was worried that violence would take place. Something else would happen in this community. You can hear flashbangs behind me. We are now just a few blocks away from where federal [screaming] immigration agents have been involved in another shooting here in Minneapolis.
ICE says one of its officers shot a Venezuelan man in the leg after he and two other migrants attacked the officer with the snow shovel and broom handle. ICE says the three men are in the country illegally.
The Trump administration says the goal is to crack down on illegal immigration and weed out fraud. They call it Operation Metro Surge. Elected officials in Minneapolis call it an occupation.
[music]
"Administration officials are adamant that this action that they are undertaking in Minneapolis right now is making this city safer."
"Targeted, precise, pre-planned operations on violent offenders. That is a good thing. But I'm concerned that people in the administration don't actually understand the reality of what's happening on the street."
[snorts]
Chief O'Hara told us the city's 911 system is overwhelmed by complaints about immigration enforcement.
"What are you seeing?"
"Seeing multiple calls of people who have been subjected to tear gas, pepper spray."
"We need more water."
"At least one case, a person was removed from a vehicle and the car wasn't even placed in park and it was rolling down the roadway."
"In an ideal world,"
it is a city on edge. And as we walked with the chief, we heard it from a man in a passing car.
"How dare you let this happen here? You should be ashamed. You should be sick, pig."
"What do you want someone like that who just yelled at you and said you let this happen to know?"
"Well, I have been very publicly saying this has been a risk for several weeks trying to get anyone in a position of authority to understand that tragedy tragedy was imminent."
The fatal shooting of Renee Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross has become a kind of Rorschach test. Some see a senseless killing. Others see an officer defending his life.
"I've seen the videos and it's not clear to me why he appears to be in the path of the vehicle more than once. When you approach someone in a vehicle, in a law enforcement encounter, there basic steps you take to ensure the officer's safety and to deescalate the situation."
But the day after the shooting, Vice President J. D. Vance put the blame squarely on Renee Gooding that it's a tragedy of her own making.
Homeland Security officials have accused Good and her wife of quote stalking immigration agents and impeding their work.
"I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead."
Top federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned in part, sources told CBS News, because they were told to investigate the actions of Renee Good and her wife rather than Officer Ross.
"Shame."
State investigators were blocked from the investigation altogether.
"Can Americans trust what's coming out about the status of this investigation?"
"Right now, the rhetoric that's coming out from a lot of our politicians is to not trust us, which is very odd to me when a lot of Americans would rather believe what they see on TikTok uh compared to a government agency."
We spoke to ICE's Marcos Charles, who oversees arrests and deportations nationwide, including Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis.
"Could you see why some Americans might think that what's happening on the streets of some of these cities leads them to see ICE feeling emboldened right now?"
"I would tell those people or ask those people to become educated on what we do and how we do it and what our authorizations are and the laws in general."
"Get out."
Videos of confrontations between protesters and immigration agents seem to go viral nearly every day.
"They have a right to observe, record, and object to police activity."
"Do they have a right to get in an agent's face and call them a Nazi?"
"People have a right to say disrespectful things. As a professional, I have an obligation not to take that personally and not to retaliate. However, they cannot physically obstruct law enforcement from performing a function. Those are those things are illegal."
This past week, the Department of Homeland Security posted a message from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller telling ICE agents, "You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties."
"Does that mean that immigration agents can go into American cities and carry out immigration enforcement with no accountability, no consequences?"
"I'm not going to comment on Mr. Miller's statement uh as far as in the context that you're asking. However, I will tell you that everywhere we go in the United States, our officers are out there conducting enforcement actions and they're doing it lawfully and with professionalism."
But scenes like this in Minneapolis, where one officer drags a woman and another points [screaming] his gun at bystanders have raised questions about their conduct.
"No one has been disciplined in any of these actions."
"No. No."
"I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you say that."
"If you assault one of our officers, an assault would be putting hands on one of my officers, spitting in their face, pushing them, um, you're going to get arrested."
"I don't think most Americans would disagree with you on that. What concerns a lot of people is some of the images that they've seen. There's a perception out there that immigration agents in Minneapolis and many other cities are acting with impunity."
"You're not seeing the entirety of the situation. Not only that, uh main mainstream media is picking up those social media posts and putting them out as real news without looking at the whole story."
We did look into this story.
6 days after and two blocks away from where Renee Good [music] was killed, Aliyah Rakman, a US citizen, was trying to get to an appointment at a traumatic brain injury clinic when she came upon ICE officers who were blocking traffic after arresting four people. We reviewed footage of the entire incident. Rakman's lawyer told us she was overwhelmed by conflicting commands from ICE.
"Police before. I'm disabled to go to the doctor up there. That's why I didn't move."
In the chaos, you can hear her say she is disabled.
"I know. I'm going to GO TO THE DOCTOR."
Chief O'Hara hadn't seen the video before we showed it to him.
"Oh my god."
"Um, you were shaking watching that."
[sighs]
"Obviously, I don't know why law enforcement officers initially approached the vehicle. It pisses me off to see that to see men doing that to a woman who's disabled. It pisses me off. If those cops works for me, they'd have a problem right now."
Marcos Charles of ICE had a different take. He said Aliyah Rakman was given repeated warnings. She was arrested but never charged.
"Our officers are told that they give one warning to follow the in the lawful instruction to stop impeding. If she did not obey that lawful order, then she was going to get arrested."
"You know, I showed this same clip to the Minneapolis police chief and he said if those cops worked for him, they'd have a problem."
"We're not Minneapolis PD."
"Are you bothered by seeing American citizens getting detained in these operations?"
"I'm bothered by seeing people take action against my officers, using vehicles to try to ram them, assaulting my officers. Um, our officers are are humans, you know, they're people."
The Department of Homeland Security released these images of injured ICE officers. According to the agency, attacks on ICE officers nationwide jumped from 19 in 2024 to 275 last year. In many cases, those injuries were sustained as agents were carrying out what ICE calls targeted enforcement.
In Minneapolis, many residents say it seems to be less targeted every day. American citizens are getting stopped and questioned, including a woman walking down the street.
"And it's not true."
"It doesn't matter where I was born. I belong here. I am US citizen."
And this Uber driver,
"I could hear you don't have the same accent as me. That's why I'm"
"Oh, so you going by accents now?"
"People have been stopped for simply appearing to be Somali or appearing to be Latino or appearing to be foreign. And it's concerning because we also know we're not getting these stories from Irish folks and Norwegian folks here."
"Our officers are are conducting targeted enforcement looking for the worst of the worst. If they encounter anybody in the area of which they're operating, they are okay to talk to those people. They've been authorized to talk to anybody that's around there and establish uh citizenship."
"How is that targeted enforcement? If they were in that area looking for a target and they were in route or were coming from that target and encountered that individual, they are authorized to talk to somebody speak."
"What's How do you define the area? Officers are walking down the street, driving down the street, the entire city of Minneapolis. Is everybody potentially"
"potentially"
"under suspicion?"
"No, nobody's under suspicion, but we're looking for those targets. And again, if we walk encounter somebody uh as we're walking up to a building, as we're in route to that building, that's still part of that operation as they proceed to that target."
On Friday, sources told CBS News the Justice Department is investigating the city's mayor, Jacob Fry, and the state's governor, Tim Walls, both Democrats. the allegation that their public statements about ICE enforcement amount to criminal interference.
"to ICE. Get the out of Minneapolis."
Frian Walls called the investigation political intimidation.
"What could happen today, tomorrow to bring this temperature down out there? I think it requires the president to say, 'We're still going to go after the worst of the worst, but we're not going to be treating American citizens in ways that risk destroying a beautiful American city.'"