Hundreds more federal agents heading to Minnesota, Noem says

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signaled that hundreds more federal agents are being deployed to Minneapolis, where the fatal shooting of a woman has inflamed strife around President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“We’re sending more officers today and tomorrow,” Noem said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures when asked about the government’s response. “They’ll arrive — there’ll be hundreds more, in order to allow our ICE and our Border Patrol individuals that are working in Minneapolis to do so safely.”

Protests erupted in Minneapolis after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renée Nicole Good during a tense confrontation on Jan. 7. Thousands marched to the shooting site on Saturday.

Read More: Thousands March to Shooting Site in Minneapolis, Protesting ICE

Noem renewed warnings by senior administration officials that people who try to hamper federal law enforcement risk arrest and criminal prosecution.

“If they impede our operations, that’s a crime and we will hold them accountable to those consequences,” she said.

Good’s fatal shooting has sparked a bitter national debate over whether the officer was justified in using deadly force. The Trump administration and other supporters of the ICE agent argue he acted in self-defense as Good’s SUV moved forward. Noem has said he followed his training.

Critics, including Minnesota officials, law-enforcement experts and civil rights advocates, point to video footage and witness accounts that didn’t show an imminent threat, calling the shooting unjustified.

With each side broadly blaming the other for the circumstances that led to the woman’s death, state and federal officials on Sunday called for lowering the political temperature.

“Of course I bear responsibility to bring down the temperature,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on NBC’s Meet the Press. Yet, he said, “the way that these institutions are being utilized right now by the Trump administration is wrong, and to be clear, is unconstitutional.”

“This was clearly a law enforcement action, where the officer acted on his training and defended himself and his life and his fellow colleagues,” Noem said on CNN’s State of the Union. Good’s death shows “why we need our leaders to turn down their rhetoric,” she said, referring to local leaders in Minnesota.

On Friday evening, hundreds of protesters spent hours outside a local hotel in downtown Minneapolis believed to be housing federal agents as part of a social-media-driven campaign dubbed “No Sleep for ICE.”  Armed with musical instruments, air horns and other noisemakers, demonstrators chanted and played music as passing cars honked horns and shouted at ICE to leave the city. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com