A City Still Healing: Minneapolis Reels After Fatal ICE Shooting

A City Forced To Relive Its Trauma

The snow-covered stretch of Portland Avenue looks quiet at first glance. But for many in Minneapolis, it has become another scar on a city that has not yet finished healing.

On Wednesday, Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by a US immigration agent on this very road. The location is impossible to ignore. Less than a mile away, in 2020, George Floyd took his final breath beneath a police officer’s knee. That killing ignited global protests and forced the United States to confront racism, policing, and the limits of accountability.

Now, Minneapolis finds itself pulled back into familiar anguish.

Fear Where Protest Once Lived

For residents like Grace, a 26-year-old local, the shock is layered with fear. She says the idea of protesting, something that once felt necessary, now feels dangerous.

She remembers joining Black Lives Matter marches in the past, already anxious about surveillance and retaliation. Those worries, she says, have only intensified under the current administration. The sense that dissent carries real physical risk has changed how people respond, even in moments that demand outrage.

Her fear is not abstract. A woman is dead. And it happened in a neighbourhood where protest once felt like a collective act of courage.

Exhaustion After Years Of Strain

Anthony Emanuel, a 36-year-old ride-share driver, describes something else weighing heavily on the city: fatigue.

He marched after Floyd’s murder. He chanted the words that echoed across the world. But today, he says many people are simply worn down. Economic pressure, rising costs, political tension, and the long process of rebuilding after 2020 have drained the energy that once powered mass mobilisation.

Minneapolis, he says, never fully recovered. And now another shock has arrived before the wounds had time to close.

Mourning In The Cold

Along Portland Avenue, a makeshift memorial has grown. Flowers and candles press into the snow as residents pause, even in freezing temperatures, to pay their respects.

Jessica Dreischmeier, who works in children’s mental health care, stopped on her daily commute to stand quietly among the tributes. She describes a deep sense of gratitude for the compassion shown by the community, paired with anger at how quickly violence can intrude from outside forces.

The contrast, she says, is jarring. Tender grief exists alongside a feeling that chaos can be imposed on the city at any moment.

Political Lines Drawn Quickly

National leaders wasted little time weighing in. From afar, Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance defended the immigration agent’s actions, framing the shooting as self-defense.

Local leaders strongly rejected that account.

Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez called for the immediate arrest and dismissal of the ICE agents involved, saying accountability is non-negotiable. His statement reflects a familiar divide: federal authority versus local leadership, and competing narratives over who gets to define truth in moments of violence.

A Familiar Question With No Easy Answer

For Minneapolis, the pain is not only about what happened on Wednesday. It is about what keeps happening.

Five years after Floyd’s death forced a reckoning, residents are again asking whether anything has truly changed. Trust in law enforcement remains fragile. Protest feels riskier. And each new incident carries the weight of unresolved history.

The city is not just mourning another life lost. It is grappling with the fear that it is stuck in a loop, reliving trauma without finding a way forward.

{Source:EWN}

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