Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said that he would potentially deploy the Minnesota National Guard to protect the people of his state from “rogue” federal agents, following the shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by federal law enforcement.
Walz held a press conference on Wednesday after news broke that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent shot and killed a protester in her vehicle. The video below shows the incident, as verified by several news agencies.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the woman was attempting to run over ICE agents “in an attempt to kill them,” and an ICE officer fired shots in self-defense at the vehicle, killing the driver.
However, witnesses appeared to dispute that account of the incident to local news, telling FOX 9 that ICE agents were attempting to enter the woman’s vehicle when one of them opened fire.
During the news conference, Walz discussed deploying the National Guard and said, “My primary responsibility as governor is the protection of the people of the people of Minnesota, and you can be assured whether it’s the state patrol or whether it’s the National Guard, their deployment is there to protect Minnesotans from whatever it is, if it’s an act of nature, if it’s a global pandemic, or in this case if it’s a rogue federal agent.”
Walz, the former vice presidential candidate who announced he would not be running for another term as governor, said at the news conference that he would wait to see what the facts are in this case, but that his job was about “public safety.”
He then called the incident “preventable,” while saying “if you’re in Portland, or you’re in LA, or you’re in Chicago, or you’re wherever they’re coming next, stand with us. Stand with us against this.”
He said that the Trump administration has no “decency” and that the person who was killed died “for no reason whatsoever.”
Walz noted that “the desire to get out and protest and to speak up to this administration of how wrong this is, that is a patriotic duty at this point in time.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also addressed the incident on X, saying that the Trump administration is lying about the incident.
