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Woman Shot, Killed by Ice Officer in Minneapolis. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 07, 2026 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:00:00]

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ICE ACTING DIRECTOR: You know, Boris, very troubling. I think my immediate concern is this. To what extent has this rushing of hiring people, this shortcutting on our training, to what extent might that have informed (ph) what happened here? To be fair, I don't know the facts yet. I saw the press conference. I heard that the chief appears to have serious concerns about how this went down.

I agree that ICE agents don't get up in the morning saying they want to go harm anyone, but something appears to have gone wrong here. Now, we need an investigation, but I think we also need to look at how experienced was this agent? How much training did he have? Is he one of these new hires? Is he someone who was, instead of going to the 13- week academy, went to an eight-week academy. This, Boris, this is about experience and training when it comes to use of force.

You're allowed to use force that's reasonable given the totality of the circumstances, but these are snap calls that are made under stress and they're judgment calls. Experience matters, training matters, and I think that's where my concern is. Was this one of these people we rushed out who wasn't ready?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, a lot of questions here, as we heard from officials out of Minneapolis who are saying that it is a 37-year-old white woman who was driving away when an ICE officer shot multiple times at her in her vehicle.

I do want to listen to something that DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem said, John, just not too long ago, and then get your reaction to it. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTI NOEM, UNITED STATES DHS SECRETARY: It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.

An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him, and my understanding is that she was hit and is deceased. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What do you make of that, John? It's a very different description of what we just heard from Minneapolis officials.

SANDWEG: Brianna, I find that to be an incredibly irresponsible statement. I mean, I've been in the room with the secretary -- worked for a secretary of DHS for five years. During times there were crisis events. I will tell you, first of all, the information you get, even at the department, the initial information is almost always wrong.

It is very hard to know in Washington, D.C., what exactly happened. That's what investigations are for. But there is no way that you can make those conclusions that this was an act of domestic terrorism, that this woman was targeting ICE agents.

There's no way that you can make those judgments at this time, given the absolute dearth of information that's available, even to the secretary of DHS. And I will just say you do a disservice, obviously, to the deceased individual, to their family, but also to the agency itself.

This undermines the credibility of the agency when you rush out and reflexively say, we know what happened, we were right, they were wrong. This is politicizing this. Not everything is political. And I think I'd feel a lot better if the secretary said, we're going to take a good, hard look at this.

Not -- it's too soon to make snap judgments. We need to do an investigation. We need to know who this individual was. We need to look at the camera footage. We need to interview the agents. We need to do ballistics and look at angles of shooting and all these other topics that will give us a fuller picture of what happened.

But you can't rush out and say, we're right, they're wrong. This is too serious of an event to do that.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": I want to go to Chief Arradondo, who I believe is still on the scene there for us.

And Chief, as the mayor was speaking and asking folks in the area to remain calm to, in his words, not give the federal government what they want and to respond with the best of who we are. We were actually watching some, what appeared to be a counter-protester and protesters pushing and shoving back and forth. We're watching agents now appearing to disperse some kind of irritant and pushing people out of the way. This was actually earlier, our producer just confirmed.

I wonder when you see that happening in your community, what comes to mind? What is your reaction?

MEDARIA ARRADONDO, RETIRED MINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF: Well, Boris and Brianna, the first thing I think about is just how fragile the community, even five-and-a-half years later, that south Minneapolis community, it still is. It's still very fragile. You know, I served under Mayor Jacob Frey as his Chief. I can tell you from that press conference clearly, he is very angry. He's very angry.

At the same time, he is urging for peace and calm. You know, Chief O'Hara spoke very candidly about the role that Minneapolis police officers played in response to the shooting. But Boris and Brianna, what really stands out to me is these next several hours are going to be very critical. The federal partners have a narrative of what occurred. Local city officials have a narrative.

And if those are not in alignment, that's where it creates concern and it creates an erosion of trust in our communities. And so, that's going to be very important.

[14:05:00]

I'm also concerned that this is going to be -- an investigation has to take place, but in the meantime, these ICE officials are going to be out here. They're going to be doing their work. And we don't want to put anyone who's wearing that uniform at greater harm and greater risk.

So, as much as our federal partners can work, at least communicate with our local authorities, I think that will be helpful, but the community is going to demand. And I say that word very strongly. They're going to demand transparency as to what occurred this morning with the shooting of the officer-involved shooting with the ICE agent.

KEILAR: Yeah, certainly. And they're saying there is video of it. So, we are trying to get some video cleared so that we can allow people to make up their own minds about what happened there. I want to go not far from where the chief is. There on the ground in Minneapolis to Whitney Wild, who is there as people have gathered in the aftermath of what happened. This 37-year-old woman being shot and killed by an ICE officer, we are told. We have just learned from local officials. Whitney, tell us what you're seeing.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, we're still seeing a significant crowd here. We are at Portland Avenue and East 35th. This scene stretches several blocks. Let me walk you through what we're seeing here.

It -- at times, it gets noisy and at times feels volatile, but for the most part, it has been pretty calm. There, as you see right now, the energy is picking back up. Law enforcement is obviously still on scene. They've barricaded off many of the streets in the surrounding areas here.

Right now, it appears, just based on what we see, that the lead agency is the Minneapolis Police Department. Earlier today, we saw the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, we saw Customs and Border Patrol, we saw the FBI, we saw the U.S. Marshals. So, there was a substantial federal law enforcement footprint here, but that has since gone down.

We saw several federal agents driving about an hour ago. These -- the crowd here is very angry, and when they saw federal law enforcement driving by, they were screaming at them, throwing snowballs at the vehicles, but the anger is still being directed toward the Minneapolis Police Department.

Some people I spoke with said that they felt like the Minneapolis Police Department was protecting ICE, who killed someone. They're very angry about that. Another woman I spoke with said that she thought that the Minneapolis police were doing OK, that they were handling the situation as well as they could, that they were doing a good job of de-escalating.

I'll leave you with this. We are not far from where George Floyd was killed. We are four blocks from where that happened. That is not in the rearview mirror, and it is something that every person I have spoken to on scene has brought up, that the city has worked really hard to try to heal after that. The Minneapolis Police Department has worked really hard to change in the aftermath of that, and I think there's a fear here that all of this pressure from ICE coming in and Customs and Border Patrol coming into this area threatens everything they've worked for in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots.

I'll leave you with a look at the crowd here, because elected officials told me that it is important for people to speak out when they see something that they think is wrong. One woman I spoke with said that they did not ask for this, that the problems in Minneapolis are not with the, as she said, not with their immigrant neighbors. So there is a lot of anger here. There was before this shooting about just seeing thousands of these federal agents descend on their city, and now particularly so in the aftermath of someone being shot by ICE. Back to you.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, Whitney, you please stand by. We had a shot a moment ago of what appeared to be the exterior of the vehicle that that 37- year-old now deceased woman was driving, and you see through the windshield a bullet hole. It appears to be -- there appears to be another sort of marking on the side-view mirror there.

I want to go to Chief Charles Ramsey, because just looking at that image, Chief, as we are working to confirm video that is circulating online to share it with our viewers, video that is confirmed to be of this incident, I wonder what you make of the fact that the chief of police in Minneapolis has stated that this was a woman who was not the target of an immigration enforcement action. It did not appear that she was armed. And she was apparently, according to the police chief, driving off -- driving off from where these officers were. It seems like that's a far more nuanced situation than what DHS has put out there in their statement, what we heard from Secretary Noem.

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, first of all, DHS, as I said before, was premature in their comments. I was listening to Director Sandweg earlier, and he was absolutely right. The initial information you get is almost never a hundred percent accurate.

[14:10:00]

And through experience, you learn not to jump the gun when you get that kind of information. And the person that probably briefed her wasn't at the scene. Not everybody has her number to be able to call her.

So this is second-, third-hand information that she's getting. So you have to be very, very careful with that sort of thing. Looking at that photo, I mean, the shot did come from the front, but it looked like on the driver's side, maybe off to the side. But again, the evidence has to match the story that the officer is telling.

The mere fact that a car may have been moving in your direction by itself, that doesn't justify the use of deadly force. So there's a lot of training that goes into use of deadly force, particularly when it comes to dealing with vehicles. One of the first things you do is get out of the path of the vehicle.

How fast is the vehicle going? Is the driver intending and trying to actually strike you with the vehicle? I mean, there's just a whole lot of questions that are still unanswered. I'm glad to hear that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is going to be also involved in taking a look at this, because I'll be honest with you, I don't think you're going to get a fair and objective review of this use of force if it stays solely within the Department of Homeland Security.

And so, there needs to be an independent look at what actually took place. But in the meantime, they're sitting on a powder keg there, and it's not going to take much in order for it to blow up. And so, I know the mayor is concerned about that. We got an excellent Police Chief there, Brian O'Hara. They're going to do everything they can to try to keep things calm.

But this is going to be a problem. And when that video eventually will surface, that shows the shooting, and if it's anything like what was described by the mayor and the chief, which I have no reason to believe it's not, it's going to be, believe me, the outcry from the community is going to be very loud and understandably so.

KEILAR: I think the very factual description from the police chief who said, there are reasons at times to shoot into a vehicle, but detailed in this one, an instance of a woman driving off when she was shot by an ICE official. That is obviously going to raise a ton of questions for people in the community. Priscilla Alvarez, I think also going into this, DHS had the first narrative out with a statement that tells something just so different from what we just heard from local officials.

But, DHS also has a credibility issue when it comes to explaining in the past, not -- I'm not talking about this, right? We're talking about other instances where they have been found to not be truthful about how they're describing their actions.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, you heard there from former Acting ICE Director, John Sandweg, who said typically the Department of Homeland Security would take longer to issue a statement with such statement of fact because they too are trying to collect information on the scene and at headquarters. It may be delayed in getting the exact information. I will tell you, looking at this in context, which is what you're alluding to here, last year in Chicago, there was an incident where protesters and federal agents clashed. In that incident, there were projectiles thrown, there was tear gas thrown. Now, what the Department of Homeland Security said at the time, in that particular incident was that protesters were the ones that instigated the tear gas being thrown by federal agents. However, this went to federal court and the federal judge reviewed all of the video evidence, all of the documents in that particular incident and found that in fact, the tear gas had been thrown by federal agents before the projectiles came at them and hit specifically one of those federal agents on the head.

So, why do I mention something from last year? Because as you have said, a federal judge, federal courts have found that at times, the Department of Homeland Security's narrative of an incident or an event is inaccurate. They have reviewed evidence in some of these incidents and found the Department of Homeland Security got ahead of itself in describing what occurred. It's going to be interesting to see what happens here, whether there's that similar litigation that would lead to a federal judge reviewing that information.

There's also those investigations that are going to happen, but we could be in a scenario, could, because we only are aware of one part of this incident. We still don't know what happened or transpired prior to this vehicle driving off, where it may appear that the Department of Homeland Security got ahead of itself. We don't know that, but we do know that there have been incidents already in cities where protesters have been present at these operations where they did get the facts wrong in the case.

SANCHEZ: Could you also speak to the characterization of DHS of these supposed violent rioters, given that previously the administration has been very eager to label folks, even peacefully protesting outside of some facilities, people dressed up in costumes, holding signs, and marching and playing music, as terrorists? I mean, that's clearly stretching the truth.

ALVAREZ: I think the question here is, how are they defining these violent rioters?

[14:15:00]

The vehicle is a part of this, right? I mean, there have been vehicle rammings that have transpired over the last year in these operations between protesters and federal agents. So, I think that is probably what they're leaning on here and what we heard from the Homeland Security Secretary, but we haven't received additional information in terms of, again, what happened before the vehicle drove away and the shots were fired.

We don't have answers to that yet, and the Department of Homeland Security hasn't provided them. So when they say violent rioters, what is the basis of that? And that is going to be part of this investigation as well, because the key from that press conference was that the driver was driving away when the shots were fired. So if that is the case, where is the justification for the defensive shots the Department of Homeland Security has described the ICE officer took? And again, I have been texting with my sources over the last several minutes and hours, and they are asking those same questions too because they simply don't know the answers. And it is part of their training to have those answers ready and available to them, particularly because it doesn't appear in that video that they keep referencing that there was that imminent threat of serious injury, despite what the Homeland Security Secretary said. Is it possible DHS has more information that they just haven't provided yet? It is.

So we will wait to see if we get those answers. But at first blush, based off what the mayor and the chief of police said at that press conference, it just raises more questions as to why an officer shot at a woman, particularly when a vehicle was driving away from her. And again, to Brianna's initial question, there is the context here that the Department of Homeland Security has previously gotten ahead of itself, and a federal judge has found that they haven't been forthcoming with their facts in the initial reaction to an incident.

KEILAR: Let's go back to former ICE Acting Director, John Sandweg, to talk a little bit about this because we heard officials there in Minneapolis and we should just mention to folks where we are in this. There has been a shooting in Minneapolis. Local officials say it's a 37-year-old white woman who was blocking traffic, but was not the subject of any law enforcement operation, who was driving off. Driving away is how the mayor put it. Driving off is how the police chief put it, when an ICE officer shot her, and she has died.

And so at this point in time, there are competing narratives. We've heard what local officials are describing about what they have seen on video. We have heard what DHS officials, even up to the DHS secretary, describing entirely, completely different things here. So John, knowing that, and knowing that there is video, and we aren't showing any video yet. We're in the process of verifying it. It's a very important process, and we're not rushing that.

But there is evidence, and so people will be able to draw their conclusions, and I wonder, when they can, what you think that is going to do to the situation?

SANDWEG: Yeah, Brianna, listen, this is why you don't rush out and draw conclusions this early, especially when you're the department. First of all, I just want to say, you're doing a disservice to the agency itself. There's already a credibility gap forming between DHS and ICE and the public, and that impacts ICE's effectiveness. It impacts its ability to have partnerships with state and local law enforcement.

It impacts its ability to develop relationships in the community that can be critical in terms of providing information that leads to law enforcement operations. But at the end of the day, this is not one where because of the video, because of how public this is, this is one where the truth is likely to be known. And again, that is why -- I think what's frustrating to me, Brianna, here, is that I feel like the department is so reflexive in terms of trying to protect the agency or the administration. But really, you're not only not doing the administration any favors, you're also not doing the agents favors. It doesn't mean you're attacking the agents themselves, to say that a mistake was made here. And I have tremendous respect for the men and women at ICE. They put their neck on the line. These assaults that they're facing are real. But the reality is they can make mistakes.

And let's go ahead and be honest. And all you say in this situation is, we're going to do an investigation. It will be as transparent as we possibly can. Anything else really does a disservice to everyone involved.

SANCHEZ: John, please stand by. So, we've now actually confirmed footage from the scene. This is footage that someone took of this incident. It's important that we mention to our viewers that this is graphic, disturbing footage. We should note that there are people on the scene who are reacting to what's happening. Some of them curse, so there is crude language. And on top of that, the context is very important. We don't know exactly what happened before this footage was captured.

So keep that in mind as you watch this. This is video of the incident where a 37-year-old woman was killed. According to Senator Tina Peters, a U.S. citizen, not the target of an immigration crackdown. But yet, she was shot by ICE agents as they say that she was attacking them. Watch this.

[14:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No. [Expletive]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: So you just saw the footage there. She was in what appeared to be that red or maroon vehicle. It appeared that she was about to leave the area when an officer approached the car, tried to open the door, and that's when she started speeding off.

Moments before that, an officer in front of her draws a weapon. It appeared from my watching of that video, that the officer drew the weapon before she even accelerated.

KEILAR: And let's go to Josh Campbell. We have Josh Campbell, do we not? Let's bring Josh Campbell in to talk a little bit about this. And Josh, I think it's important, as people watch this video -- I had to watch it a few times to kind of understand what was going on because the officer who pulls the weapon almost, it sort of feels, if you don't watch it a couple times, appears out of nowhere. But it appears that he had kind of crossed in front of the vehicle from right to left and had pretty much made it to the left side of the vehicle. And just, you take us through what you're seeing.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, so it's important to note, as Boris noted at the beginning, we don't know what transpired before this happened, but let's put this video under the microscope and walk through it. And I can tell you, I've watched this over two dozen times right now. The focal point is going to be the front left fender of that vehicle and the agent that is then beyond it who decides to open fire.

Now, the way agents are trained, first of all, and the police chief alluded to this in the press conference, is that they're not permitted to fire into a moving vehicle solely for the purpose of disabling the vehicle. And so what this will come down to, and you can imagine that there will be different parties here that are arguing different things, but when you put yourself in the position of the agent, and I say this as a former FBI agent, they're trained that they can only use deadly force when there's an imminent threat, either to themselves or someone else. That is the only time you can open fire on someone.

And so in looking at that vehicle, there will be a question, was this a colossal failure in judgment by that agent that was at the front of that vehicle? It appeared where his position is that he did have the ability to move out of the way of the vehicle. Agents aren't required to retreat in certain situations under policy, but again, it's a question of judgment. Now, there's another thing to point out too, and that's the angle that we see from the bystander is that it appears just before the shots are fired, the front wheels on that vehicle turned to the right.

That's an indication obviously to us from that vantage point that the driver is about to move out of that location toward the right. I can imagine that that agent will be articulating and arguing that he could not see the direction of the wheels. And so again, what agents have to articulate, and people may like this or not, but federal agents have wide latitude in articulating what they believe to be a specific threat.

But what this will come down to is would a reasonable officer in the same situation have made the same decision? And again, as we walk through that, and this will be slowed down, I've watched it slowed down multiple times now just to look at every single indication of what was happening. You have the agent that comes, tries to open the door. The person then flees.

An agent can't fire into a vehicle simply because someone is driving away from them. There have to be other characteristics that play there, but it's going to come down to that agent at the front of the car. Was this a colossal failure in judgment? Even if it was, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was unlawful under the current policy that agents currently fall under.

But again, that doesn't make it right. That just means that when it comes down to whether this person would be legally charged, this agent for this, that is yet to be seen. Final point I'll note is that, and we've been talking about this, I've been covering the immigration raids from coast to coast as well.

We have seen something that is much different under this administration that we have seen in decades past. And that is typically, when a federal agent opens fire against another person, these shooting review investigations can sometimes take months, sometimes a year or beyond. They launch what are called the shooting review teams.

They try to determine was the agent acting lawfully under policy? And there's often a significant amount of time that passes before the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security will come out and say, here is our conclusion. The agent acted properly. The agent did not act properly.

We are in a different era. We have now seen multiple incidents over the past several months where the Department of Justice and DHS come out very quickly to, essentially, exonerate the agent.

[14:25:00]

We already heard the DHS secretary come out a short time ago, essentially, exonerate the agent who opened fire, calling this an act of domestic terrorism, which -- without providing any facts that that's the case, that this is domestic terrorism. And we've seen instances in the past where these agents have been exonerated very quickly. That is concerning because in order for the public to have confidence in law enforcement, they have to know that a thorough investigation was actually completed, guys.

KEILAR: And also, Josh, if you can stand by as we're going to look at another video now, and also to warn our viewers about this, this is also graphic. This is more video that comes after that moment you just saw. This is from the aftermath of the shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dude, what's happening to her? What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get back! Get back!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: That was a video, apparently, of the aftermath of what took place, and it looks as though there's someone over the driver of that vehicle, perhaps trying to render aid. We have CNN Senior Legal Analyst, Elie Honig with us. Elie, when it comes to making a determination about what transpired here, whether the shooting was merited or not, and whether the person who shot this driver should be held accountable, how does the legal system go about determining all of that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So Boris, here's the legal standard in a situation like this. Police officers, including federal officers, including ICE agents, are allowed to use lethal force to discharge their firearms only if it's reasonably necessary to prevent imminent, meaning immediate, soon occurring lethal harm, meaning death or serious bodily injury. That's basically the legal standard here.

So the question that needs to be asked is, was this shooting necessary to prevent someone from getting immediately killed or maimed? It can be the officer himself. It can be a fellow ICE officer. It could be a state police officer. It could be a bystander. But that's the standard that investigators and prosecutors are going to have to apply here.

KEILAR: Talk to us a little bit more about what you were expecting for this, I mean, how it plays out, and also just the fact that you heard local officials talking about there being justice. You have federal law enforcement here, right, but this is happening in Minnesota. What are you reading between the lines on what they're saying?

HONIG: So, we've definitely heard differing accounts of what happened, depending on who's giving that account. What they need, above all else, and I'm going to echo Commissioner Ramsey, Charles Ramsey, what he said earlier -- what they need here is a coordinated, independent investigation. There's a lot of entities that have the authority to investigate this.

ICE can investigate it internally. The FBI typically gets involved if you're talking about a discharge of a weapon by any federal agency. Also separate from that, Minneapolis and Minnesota authorities can get involved in investigations here.

The best-case scenario is if the agencies come together, they say, look, let's wall off ICE because they're the ones who are going to be under investigation here, one of their agents. Let's have other agencies get together and do this investigation very quickly. And let me tell you some of the things that I think the police and prosecutors are going to be looking for here.

Obviously, the videos. We've already seen, we've already shown here on CNN, two different videos. There likely are many more than that. So, officers are going to have to go through frame by frame every video that's determined to be authentic. They're going to take statements from bystanders. That would include the other ICE agents. That would include the one who fired the firearm into the car. That would include civilians that are nearby.

They're going to look at the ballistics. How many shots were fired, at what range, where did they hit? This is going to be -- it needs to be a thorough and independent investigation so we can get definitive answers here.

SANCHEZ: Elie, I just want to let our viewers know that Governor Tim Walz is set to give a press briefing in roughly a half an hour, in the next hour or so. He obviously has been at the center of a number of recent headlines, and it'll be interesting to see how he responds to this happening in his state.

Elie, quickly to you, do you think it could complicate any legal case, the statements that have been put out by DHS describing this as a violent rioter weaponizing a vehicle and attempting to run over officers? Could that potentially get in the way of a case that's brought forward, if one is?

HONIG: Well, if the ultimate findings are contrary to that, Boris, then yes, that's going to be a continued credibility issue for ICE. But the things that Kristi Noem says publicly are not ultimately going to be admissible or relevant if there's to be an investigation, a fact-finding mission, and a prosecution of an individual officer --