Tens of thousands protest in Minneapolis

Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis on Saturday to decry the fatal shooting of a woman by a US immigration agent, part of more than 1,000 rallies planned nationwide this weekend against the federal government’s deportation drive.

The massive turnout in Minneapolis despite a whipping, cold wind underscores how the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday has struck a chord, fueling protests in major cities and some towns. 

Minnesota’s Democratic leaders and the administration of President Donald Trump, a Republican, have offered starkly different accounts of the incident.

Led by a team of Indigenous Mexican dancers, demonstrators in Minneapolis, which has a metropolitan population of 3.8 million, marched towards the residential street where Good was shot in her car.

The boisterous crowd, which the Minneapolis Police Department estimated in the tens of thousands, chanted Good’s name and slogans such as “Abolish ICE” and “No justice, no peace — get ICE off our streets.”

“I’m insanely angry, completely heartbroken and devastated, and then just like longing and hoping that things get better,” Ellison Montgomery, a 30-year-old protester, told Reuters.