The White House is defending fatal ICE shooting of Minneapolis woman. But what are the rules of engagement?
DOJ manual states firing at vehicle should be 'last resort', expert says
The deadly shooting of a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer has raised questions about the agency's use of force.
On Wednesday, Renee Good, a mother of three, was shot in her SUV in a residential neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis. Defenders of the officer's actions, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, claim the woman "weaponized" her vehicle and aimed it at the officer, and that his shots were in self-defence.
Some have rejected that argument, like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who called the self-defence argument "bullshit."
Other politicians, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, labelled the shooting as murder.
Meanwhile on Thursday, federal U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people in a vehicle outside a hospital in Portland. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said when agents identified themselves to the occupants during a “targeted vehicle stop” in the afternoon, the driver tried to run them over.
ICE officers, who fall under DHS jurisdiction, are responsible for enforcing immigration laws, meaning they have the power to arrest individuals, and can use force to do so if arrest is resisted. But they are bound by federal guidelines as to when they can use such force.
Policies updated following Floyd killing
Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, then-U.S. president Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring all federal law enforcement agencies to revise their use-of-force policies to meet or exceed the standards included in the Department of Justice policy, which had at the time been recently updated.
That DOJ policy states that deadly force can be used "only when necessary" and when an officer has "a reasonable belief" that the subject was putting them or others in "imminent danger of death or serious physical injury."
It also states officers cannot discharge firearms solely to disable moving vehicles. However, there are a couple of caveats.
For example, an officer can do so if the person in the vehicle is threatening them or another person with deadly force by other means, like a gun. An officer can also fire at the vehicle if it's operating in a way that threatens death or serious physical injury to them or others.
However, the guideline stresses that such force should only be used when "no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle."
John P. Gross, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said ICE's rules of engagement are grounded in both officer and public safety.
"Because if you shoot at the vehicle and you hit the driver — is the car going to come to a stop?" said Gross, who has written extensively about police use of force.
"You've disabled the driver of the vehicle, and so now you have a car going down the road.... That is not a good solution to the problem."
In the case of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis, the car did continue along the road after the driver had been shot, until it crashed into a parked car.
'As a last resort'
Gross said that while the DOJ manual does allow for an officer to shoot at a vehicle in self-defence, "it really says you should be doing this as a last resort."
DHS, meanwhile, has similar policies of its own regarding the use of force. Officers cannot discharge their firearms to disable vehicles or to fire at their operators, according to a 2023 memo updating its policy, unless deadly force is justified under its standards.
Notably, the DHS policy doesn't have the same level of detail on what to do in the case of a legitimate threat, as Udi Ofer, a founding director of Princeton University's Policy Advocacy Clinic, wrote on X. It also doesn't state potential alternatives to try first, like moving out of the way of a vehicle.
But before deadly force is used under these circumstances, the officer must consider "the hazards that may be posed to law enforcement and innocent bystanders" by an out-of-control vehicle.
Gross said the memo seems to offer less specific guidance when it comes to shooting at vehicles, but the language is consistent about considering the hazards created by one that is out of control.
In an email to CBC News, an ICE spokesperson said officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize safety.
Officers also regularly receive ongoing use of force training, they said, and the current use-of-force policy is the same as it was in 2023 under the Biden administration.
David Weinstein, a Miami-based lawyer and former assistant U.S. attorney, said the justification of the use of deadly force in Minneapolis will come down to whether the officer had a reasonable belief that his life was in jeopardy.
"The question becomes, was she going to run him over, and therefore you've got a rather large motor vehicle coming at you. And an officer could say, 'That was deadly force, and that's why I shot [her],'" he said.
"It's not what a reasonable person believes, but what a reasonable officer in the same situation believes."
Emmanuel Mauleón, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota, echoed that courts determine whether deadly force was justified based on what they believe an "objectively reasonable officer would have done, given the facts on hand."
"Not the subjective beliefs of the officer present," he said. "But they also tend to not want to second-guess the split-second decision of the officers at the moment."
He said people tend to interpret these situations differently, as is true for this case, where White House officials say the agent's life was clearly in danger, while other politicians and observers reject the self-defence argument.
"So I think that type of disagreement is the kind of disagreement that comes before a jury and is determined, at that state, [as] a factual question."
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With files from The Associated Press, Reuters