Speaking to "Ringvaade" the week following the fatal shooting of a woman protester by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Kaju said more violent incidents are likely.

Setting up the Department of Homeland Security, under whose authority ICE falls, began following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. With this, Kaju said, a supervisory body plus criminal and civil law enforcement agencies were brought together under one umbrella, with the stated aim of helping the war on terror and the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants to the U.S.

Through both President Donald Trump's first term and his second term so far, ICE has been the executor of one of his principal campaign pledges – a tougher and more conservative immigration policy than seen under the Democrats.

This happened by: "On the one hand closing the border, on the other hand tracking down, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants who have arrived in the country and are already living in the U.S.," Kaju noted.

Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross last Wednesday in Minneapolis, where ICE had been part of a large-scale immigration enforcement operation, was met with widespread outrage, protest and pushback over the extent of the use of force by agents from outside the city and state.

Kaju pointed out that because the agent is a federal employee, a standard state-level criminal investigation is not being conducted in this case. This has led to distrust about the process.

"As a rule that is indeed the case, as the Trump administration has also said on this occasion. We do not allow the state or regional government to carry out this criminal investigation, since this is a central government employee. The laws allow, in such a case, to state that jurisdiction lies with the federal courts and the FBI. The FBI is the body that would investigate, but people on the ground certainly do not trust an investigation by the central government, and do not believe that an honest result will arise from there," Kaju said.

According to Kaju, similar incidents to what happened in Minneapolis may reoccur, partly as ICE has been tasked with actions and in environments its agents are not fully trained for.

"They have previously mainly carried out a completely different type of operations, in border zones. Now they are operating in very densely populated urban environments, where they are sent to conduct raids, searches and detentions. There, they have been facing an extremely hostile group, namely the local populace, which views ICE's presence very suspiciously and has been working directly counter to them. They do not have the tactical skills to cope in such situations, to de-escalate conflicts and calm things down. That is precisely the reason such incidents take place, and they will certainly continue," Kaju said.

As for the scale of one of the issues, Kaju said that there are currently about 14 million undocumented people residing in the U.S., population around 340 million. Politically speaking, the issue has been prominent thanks to local blue-collar or agricultural workers with basic education losing out in the job market to this demographic.

"This group – a young or middle-aged man with high school education or lower – is the person who has felt itself the most socioeconomically threatened by the influx of immigrants. In very many sectors, from construction to agriculture, it is precisely the immigrants who can make up a third to two thirds of the entire workforce. So this is certainly also a major economic issue for America," he concluded.

The day before the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security announced what it called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, sending 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who had been Kamala Harris' Democratic Party running mate at the 2024 presidential election, announced he had begun preparing the Minnesota National Guard as protests over the shooting swelled. The New York Times on Monday reported that in addition to investigating Ross's actions, federal investigators at the FBI and DOJ were also tasked with analyzing any connections that Good might have had to activist groups protesting the Trump administration's immigration policies.

Andreas Kaju is a former advisor at the government office and at the defense ministry, and a co-founder of the Meta Advisory PR agency.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!