‘highly Problematic’: Trump Admin Faces Internal Doubts Over Ice Shooting Response

The Trump administration’s rapid and aggressive response to the Minnesota shooting has prompted quiet concern among some administration allies, as well as former and current Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Particular anguish centers around how quickly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in public remarks from Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday insisted that Renee Good, the 37-year old woman killed by an ICE officer, had committed an act of “domestic terrorism” and tried to “ram them with her vehicle.”

Even supporters of the president fear that the administration’s approach — within hours the White House deputy chief of staff had also deemed this a case of “domestic terrorism” — risks undermining public confidence in the ongoing investigation and expanding the credibility gap between the public and the immigration agency patrolling dozens of American cities.

“Do I think it’s domestic terrorism? Yeah, I do,” said a person close to the White House, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive situation and ongoing investigation. “But it might not have been wise to say that at the outset, how [Noem] said it.”

Within 48 hours, another shooting, this time in Portland, Oregon, by a Customs and Border Protection officer, further inflamed outrage as protesters, Democrats and top administration officials accused each other of fascism and terrorism.

The shootings — and the eye witness videos circulating on the internet — come amid heightened tensions between Americans and the thousands of federal agents deployed in U.S. cities. Vice President JD Vance on Thursday lamented the threats and attacks ICE agents are under. On Friday, he shared a new video that he implied vindicated the officer in Minnesota by showing his “life was endangered and he fired in self defense.”

Still, the administration’s aggressive tactics, aimed at ramping up arrests and deportations, have brought widespread condemnation and a growing number of confrontations between protesters and immigration officials, who are deployed for crowd control and other tasks the agencies historically don’t perform.

It has left ICE as the latest and most prominent example of an ongoing national Rorschach test in which Republicans and Democrats watch the same video and claim to see wildly different truths, and some inside the agency worry that the administration’s rhetoric will only widen political fractures.

“I don’t know how we recover from this,” said an administration official.

In Portland, DHS said the agents were attempting to stop an unauthorized immigrant from Venezuela affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Portland police said officers responded to the scene and treated a man and a woman with gunshot wounds, both of whom remain hospitalized.

The Portland FBI issued an initial post Thursday on X characterizing the incident as an officer-involved shooting. It was later deleted. When POLITICO requested the statement from Portland FBI Thursday evening, it characterized it as an “assault on federal officers.”

The incident in Portland appeared to be a targeted operation, but Democrats tied it to the shooting in Minneapolis as another example of the Trump administration rushing to close a case prior to an investigation. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Friday that the administration “can’t be trusted,” citing a separate case in Chicago from last year.

“This pattern of ‘shoot first, then lie, lie, deny’ has to stop,” she said. “The videos don’t lie.”

The administration official was more sympathetic to the Portland agents because it was a targeted operation, but the official added that it will be difficult for the average American to separate the two closely-timed incidents.

“This is highly problematic and not a good look and not something our government should be remotely engaged in,” the administration official said of the Minneapolis shooting.

When asked about concerns that the administration’s approach could undermine public confidence in its investigation, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin also pointed POLITICO to the new footage shared by Vance and other administration officials. She added: “If you weaponize a vehicle, a deadly weapon to kill or cause bodily harm to a federal law enforcement officer, that is an act of domestic terrorism and will be prosecuted as such.”

Minnesota officials have accused federal law enforcement of stymying state investigators into the deadly ICE-related shooting, which came as more than 2,000 agents descended on Minnesota this week in the Trump administration’s largest immigration operation to date. As for Oregon, state officials have opened a separate investigation.

Officers were deployed to the North Star State from across the country, as part of the administration’s efforts to crackdown on the welfare-fraud scandal in the state.

Just hours after the shooting in Minneapolis, DHS declared on X that the woman’s actions were an act of “domestic terrorism.” Noem gave live remarks soon after echoing this conclusion. White House officials argued the same, all before an investigation had really begun.

“Whatever outcome this investigation produces, I don’t see how anyone’s gonna believe it when the secretary already is firmly — and doubled down on — a conclusion without knowing all the facts,” said John Sandweg, who led ICE from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama administration.

Border czar Tom Homan’s response was initially more measured, telling CBS News that he wouldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation. He released a statement later on Wednesday, saying the “brave women and men of ICE are heroes. Like all Americans, our officers have a right to self defense. Full stop.”

“Homan had a very mature response, and a thoughtful, professional way of dealing with it,” said the person close to the White House. “I think you can read a lot into that.”

The White House on Thursday added a press briefing to the schedule, with Vance at the podium for more than 30 minutes fielding questions from reporters. Vance said, without offering evidence, that the woman shot and killed in Minnesota was influenced by a leftist network. Reporters pushed him on whether there was a risk in defining the victim in the early stages of the investigation. He said the Department of Justice, in addition to the investigation DHS is conducting, will continue to look into the incident.

“But the simple fact is what you see is what you get in this case. You have a woman who was trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement officer. Nobody debates that. I can believe that her death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of a far-left who has martialed an entire movement of lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”

Trump on Friday was asked during his meeting with oil executives about what he’s learned about the “left wing network” Vance referred to. The president said he had not seen the vice president’s remarks, but he referenced a woman screaming “shame” in one of the videos circulating online and called her a “professional troublemaker.”

“You have agitators, and we will always be protecting ICE and we will always be protecting our Border Patrol and our law enforcement,” the president told reporters.

Court filings show that the officer who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, had been injured in June when he was dragged by a different vehicle in Minnesota. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that the officer had “abrasions all over his body” from the operation targeting an unauthorized immigrant convicted of felony sexual assault on a minor and suggested that it helps explains why Ross was likely on hyper-alert when Good began driving.

But some former and current officials who have worked in immigration enforcement — while they note many facts remain unknown — were alarmed by the footage and the agent’s decision to fire his weapon. And Sandweg, the former ICE leader, fears that the administration’s response will only create more challenges for law enforcement officers who are already being placed in “tough” situations they aren’t trained for.

“You’re not doing the agency or the agents any justice when you rush out and reflexively defend them. You just create risks of more of this,” he said. “No one at ICE goes to work saying ‘I want to shoot someone,’ absolutely not. But the aggression is being rewarded, and I think sometimes you’re better off to just stop and think a little bit.”

Josh Gerstein and Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.