Minnesota

TO long-time community organizerSmith has strong ties to activists in his state, some of whom went to the scene of the shooting and shared eyewitness accounts of what happened. But when Smith finally saw a video of the shooting that was posted on social media, he was still shocked.

“I literally gasped in pain and horror,” Smith said in an interview Thursday. He saw it several times. “When you’re in my job, you have to try to really and completely understand what’s happening, while also having, you know, a very human reaction to this terrible tragedy,” he said.

He was still watching the video when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared on the television in his office. Contrary to the witness accounts Smith was receiving and the video she had been reviewing, Noem claimed that the woman who had just been shot to death, later identified as Renee Nicole Good, 37, had committed “an act of domestic terrorism” when trying to hit an ICE agent with his car.

“That’s really impressive to see,” the Minnesota Democrat fumed. “Kristi Noem, in her big cowboy hat, telling us all exactly what had happened, and she so clearly disagreed with the video of the only witness I had seen at the time. I was disgusted to see them immediately try to spin this and criticize people about what had happened.”

Smith said he was aware of the fact that a video can only show one point of view, but Noem’s claim defied the evidence. Multiple videos with different angles of the situation show Good, a mother of three, apparently trying to walk away, without doing anything threatening or violent toward ICE agents on the street. A person on the scene he told News themezone that Good seemed “obviously scared” and was trying to leave.

Since then, President Donald Trump has doubled down on Noem’s version of events, piling on inflammatory rhetoric and falsely claiming on social media that Good “violently, deliberately and cruelly ran over the ICE officer, who appears to have shot him in self-defense.” Vice President JD Vance placed the blame squarely on Good for being shot and killed during a briefing Thursday. asserting without foundation she belonged to a “broader leftist network.”

On Thursday, Minnesota state investigators said the FBI was denying them access to evidence needed to conduct an investigation into the shooting. The FBI usually works with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on investigations, but not this time. The BCA, which is not a political entity, issued a statement clarifying that he was being blocked by the feds.

“I’m very angry,” Smith said when asked about the Trump administration’s response.

““My community should not see the federal government as an enemy, and that’s what a lot of people who are in the middle of this feel right now,” the senator said. “That the federal government can’t be trusted, that they’re killing people in the street.”

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He said his office immediately called the FBI when it learned that BCA was being denied a role in the investigation, telling them what they were doing is unacceptable. Minnesotans will have no reason to believe the FBI investigation will be fair or impartial, he warned, given the way top Trump administration officials have already been trying to pin the blame for the shooting on Good.

The FBI’s response? They told his office they cannot speak about the matter because it is an active investigation. Pure nonsense, Smith said.

“W.We rejected that because they had already talked, not only about the investigation, but also what they had. concluded that it happened “Without any investigation,” said the senator. “So they have no right to say, ‘Oh, we can’t talk about this,’ when they’ve already talked about it.”

For now, the Minnesota senator says she is focused on doing everything she can to ensure there is a credible investigation into what happened to Good. He also wants ICE to leave his state.

“I have no doubt that ICE agents in Minnesota are contributing to public insecurity, and I believe they should go,” he said.

Instead, the administration is supposedly planning send Customs and Border Protection agents to Minnesota.

The entire situation is “horrifying,” Smith added, and he feels like Trump is waging “some kind of strange political attack on my state and our voters.”

“Where is the humanity here?” she asked. “How far are they really going to go?”