Meet the Press NOW — January 7

Foreign. Nobles in Washington, as we continue to follow the breaking news out of Minneapolis where demonstrators are gathering, an FBI investigation is underway. And local officials are livid after a woman was shot and killed by an ICE officer in her car during an immigration operation earlier today. The accounts of the officer involved shooting coming from federal and local officials are wildly different.

Homeland Security Secretary is alleging the woman who was killed was carrying out an act of domestic terrorism. Minnesota's governor calling that description, quote, propaganda. NBC News has obtained video from multiple angles of the incident recorded by witnesses as ICE was carrying out what DHS described as an enforcement operation. And we do want to warn you that the video you're about to see is disturbing.

No. No. Oh my God. What the.

What the. You just. What the did you do? Now, as we show you this video, again slowed down, authorities say the woman shot and killed was 37 years old and was not a target of the ICE operation.

In a statement, DHS said, quote, An ICE officer fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. Thankfully, the ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries.

That is a statement from bhs and here's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem addressing the incident. It was 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 attempted to run them over and ran 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, is that she was hit and is deceased. Now, some eyewitness accounts and the video you just watched dispute that characterization of what happened.

With members of the community calling for ICE to leave the city during protests near the scene of the shooting and the city's mayor sending this message to federal agents not here to cause safety in the city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust. They're ripping families apart, they're sowing chaos on our streets and in this case, quite literally killing people.

So they are already trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is you, ice, get the out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in the city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite.

Minnesota's Governor Tim Walls announcing minutes ago that he was issuing a warning order to prepare the National Guard while pushing back against the administration's deployment of federal agents. We've been warning for weeks that the Trump admin dangerous sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday I said exactly that. What we're seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict.

It's governing by reality tv. And today that recklessness cost someone their life. There's nothing more important than Minnesota safety. I've issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard.

We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads up for folks. And these National Guard troops are our National Guard troops. They're teachers in your community.

They're business owners. They're construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our community to be used as a prop in a national political fight.

We will not take the bait. Comes in the midst of escalating feud between state and local officials and the federal government, not just over intensifying immigration crackdown, but also over allegations of fraud involving some Somali residents. Joining me now is NBC News senior Homeland Security correspondence by Julia Ainsley, NBC News White House reporter Monica Alba, and Jim Cavanaugh, retired ATF Special Agent in Charge and now an NBC News law enforcement analyst. So, Julia, let's start with you.

What do we know exactly about what happened in Minneapolis today? Well, two competing narratives as you just laid out, Ryan. What we heard from Secretary Christine was that this was an incident of domestic terrorism in which a woman tried to ram her video into ICE officers as they dug their cart of the snow. The video does not show that in fact, this woman is in her car in the middle of the road.

Could be blocking them from getting to where they need to go when she is approached by the ICE officers. Now, I've spoken to some senior DHS officials who say that the way the officers approach the car is not, according to their training, not ever supposed to go to the front of the car. They would always want to approach at a 90 degree angle. So that's the first thing I'm learning that seems out of character, at least with what they are trained to do.

Also, what we heard then from eyewitnesses is that they believe that this woman was trying to leave. Now, the angle of the video, it's hard to determine if the Officer who fired the shots in the front of the vehicle could see or would at least assume that she was trying to turn her wheel, go the other direction, or whether she was trying to move toward him. This is the kind of thing typically, Ryan, you would find out these details during the course of an ongoing investigation. But instead, today, both sides very quick to give their version, their account of exactly how this went down.

The question remains here. Was this woman attempting to leave a situation she found herself in, or was she, as the Department of Homeland Security is laying out, using her vehicle as a weapon to intentionally hurt that ICE officer? Of course, Minnesota and Minneapolis leaders pushing back fiercely, saying she was not and that she, she was an innocent person. One thing's clear.

This is the new flashpoint of immigration here. Okay, Julia, stand by. Thank you for that, Jim. And Monica, you stand by as well.

But we're going to dip in and listen to Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who is talking right now about this incident. To so randomly and senselessly lose somebody that they love while they're sitting in their car. It's just unbelievable. And it shows how ICE is making my city so much less safe.

What specifically in the video makes you mistrust what the administration is saying, but from what you've seen gives you that impression? Well, I start from the fundamental position that when you have an event like this, you have a killing like this, there is an investigation. You bring in the people who know how to do investigations to understand exactly what happened. And yet the President of the United States and the Secretary have been just pronouncing what they think happened.

I mean, I can see with my own eyes what millions of people have now seen in this video. And it is certainly hard to see how in this video you see any evidence that this woman rammed, you know, ICE agents who were trying to dig their car out of snowbank. So, but this is, again, why it's important that we have a thorough investigation, because we're going to want justice here. So I called, I reached out, my office reached out to DHS as soon as this event happened.

I'm urging them to get ICE away from the scene. The presence of ICE at the scene of this killing was provocative. It was. It was fueling people's rage and anger and grief.

And. And so that was my first call. My second outreach to them has been to try to understand how I can under. How I can kind of bring together what the Secretary said about what she has apparently concluded happened with the video that millions of Americans are looking at.

And I've Asked to see like what is your, what do you have that would suggest that your, your story is accurate. And I think honestly what's going on here is just flat out gaslighting on the part of the administration and the Secretary without really any due diligence or respect for the tragedy that's happened here. Is there anything Congress that's the Democrats can do, whether it's the appropriations process or something else, to hold is accountable for this? Well, you know, the, the department has sent over 2,000 ICE agents to Minnesota.

I don't understand what their legal authority is for doing that. They have had absolutely no consultation with local law enforcement or state law enforcement, as the governor just said in his, in his remarks. And so I think as a member of the Democratic minority in con doing everything that I can to try to get this administration to follow the law. But I sure wish that we had some support on the other side of the aisle for that.

Are you concerned now with the situation on the ground in Minnesota? Do you think tensions. Well, I mean, of course I am. I know that.

I know this. I know, I know my city really well and I know how angry people are and how hurt people are and I know how scared they are because the presence of these ICE agents on the street has been terrifying to people. And so I firmly support people's rights to exercise their free speech rights and to demonstrate and to protest. And it's also really, really important that we keep everybody safe.

And so I second the comments and the statements of the governor and the mayor as they have said that it is extremely important that people's demonstrations remain peaceful and that we keep everybody safe. And I respect that they're both doing everything that they can to make that be the case as people express their, their fury and their grief over what's happened in the Atlas. Well, I wish I knew. I mean, I wish I just leave this alone.

I mean seriously, they're, I mean, what is the, you know, when do things stop being about politics and, and starting about actual human decency? And so I mean, I'm sure they, I mean I can, we can all hypothesize on what all their political reasons are, but meanwhile a woman died being shot in her car and everything that they're doing is making it worse and better. Thank you all. Senator Tina Smith.

That was Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota. She was talking live on Capitol Hill her initial response to the situation in her home state where a 37 year old woman was shot and killed during an engagement with ICE officers in Minneapolis. There has been a very opinion as to how that situation played itself out. And now we're starting to see protests begin to crop up in Minneapolis and in the state of Minnesota as a result.

I want to bring back in our panel of experts that is breaking down these events in Minneapolis and Minnesota today. A national homeland security correspondent, Julia Ainsley, national law enforcement intelligence analyst on winter, joined us now. Our White House reporter, Monica Alba is on the North Lawn. And Jim Cavanaugh was retired ATF special agent in charge.

He's also NBC News law enforcement analyst. So, Jim, I want to get your take on this because you are the expert here. From your expertise, your law enforcement expertise, what were the biggest concerns you have from what you've seen in this video? Well, you know, we have to look first at the scene there in the street.

Holistically, we have to look at it in a large frame first. We don't have all the answers. There's a gray SUV on the right. My question there is that belong to citizen or is that a nice vehicle that was stuck in the snow?

It could have been an ICE vehicle stuck in the snow. The vehicle on the right, the silver suv, or it could be that assistance vehicle that's not clear. And then we have the burgundy SUV where the woman was shot that starts out here blocking the highway. We don't know the answer why it's blocking the highway.

Did she make that turn because the ICE vehicle was there. If it's an ICE vehicle or another citizen's vehicle, we don't know the answer. At any rate, ICE officers approach the vehicle and there's one officer in front of the vehicle. Now.

Did he come from that ysuv? We don't know. Was that his. And he came out, he's in front.

And one thing I did notice, Ryan, that I think is important to be instructed to the investigators is the bird in the SUV first starts to back up when the ICE agent tries to talk. First starts to back up because I believe the driver is just trying to leave. They don't want to comply. And when the vehicle's front tires start to spin on the ice, you can see that left front driver's tire spin on the ice.

When it starts to go forward at the same instant, you'll see that agent in the front draws the weapon. It's almost simultaneous. I want to break that down frame by frame. If I was committing the case, when that tire starts to spin, a weapon is drawn.

So the question is, the central question is, you know, was the ICE agent in fear of great bowing Harm or death. And if so, was he justified in shooting into the vehicle? Shots from the front of the vehicle into front of the vehicle would tend to indicate that. Shots from the side door, side window would not indicate that, so would make it less dangerous.

So we'll have to see how that all plays out. We don't know the motives of the woman inside. We think she was just trying to leave. But we do know that it really appears she wasn't trying to comply with the ICE agent's orders.

But I want to ask you, Julia raised this point before about the protocols that any sort of law enforcement officer would have in approaching what could potentially be a hostile vehicle. And would any law enforcement agent, nice agent. Be trained to go in front of a vehicle that could become a weapon in a situation like this? Was that an appropriate place for this agent to be given the situation?

Well, see, that's the question I raised initially. Did he come from the gray vehicle? In other words, what's the area on the street because he came from the gray vehicle. The protocol Julie is talking about, she's correct, of course, but we all use that same protocol, law enforcement, that's a traffic stop protocol.

So when you pull a car over and you're approaching, you're coming in at that 90, you'll see troopers and officers even coming from the passenger side, which even gives you more level safety, not only from traffic, but from the driver trying to assault you. So that's a traffic stop protocol here. You have agents on a C street. They could be on the sidewalk when something happens.

They could be. He could be out of that gray car and already in the front of the vehicle. We don't really know his position because we don't see him until the very last minute. You don't see him here until the vehicle backs up and then he appears.

So it looks like he was already there. He didn't appear to come out of the gray pickup truck, which is an ICE pickup truck to the left, you can see there, that has flashing blue and red lights in the grill. So maybe he was in another vehicle or he was on the sidewalk. So, yes, this is a different situation than a traffic stop, Julius.

Right. You never want to put yourself in front of a vehicle if you think there's going to be some danger. The other side is maybe they didn't realize there was danger there. They were just going to ask the person to move or back up or we're law enforcement officers.

You can't go this way. Or please, back over here. You know, not every Situation immediately is fraught with danger and you have to deal with people. So that could be what happened here.

I don't think we can assume from some of the statements, politicians, that, you know, this was terrible terrorism or she was evil or she had been and she was trying to run over the ICE officer. The video doesn't show all these things. What the video shows is a truck going toward the ICE officer. Even if she's trying to escape, he still can save himself, regardless of her motive.

It doesn't have to be terrorism for him to fire. It doesn't have to be anything other than I want to run over by a vehicle and I'm in a position where it could happen to me, even if she was trying to leave. But, I mean, I guess I'm not a member of law enforcement. I've been trained in this regard.

But if your biggest concern in a situation like this where you're standing in front of a vehicle and the vehicle is getting starting to move, wouldn't your first inflation just as a human being responding would be just to get out of the way? Well, I guess I'm questioning the. The decision to pull the service weapon and fire as opposed to just jumping out of the way. Could that be a question of how this process was handled?

Well, I think it's gonna be a question for the case, and I think it's a legitimate question. And people argue, well, they're jumped out of the way. Now you will see that agent's feet slip on the icy road. So he's in a dicey situation.

Not only does the wheel spin on the front of that suv and remember, the first thing that happens that we see is the vehicle starts to back up. It doesn't start to go forward, it starts to back up, and then it's put in drive and the wheel spins on the ice and he draws a duty weapon. Now, was it justified? We can't answer that any more.

Video. We need the body camera video from the ICE agents, from the vehicle, doorbell cameras, statements, statements of everybody to really determine what happened. Yeah. Let's go back to you now.

I understand the DHS plans to hold a press conference to provide some more information about what happened. That'll be at 5pm local to 6pm eastern. And it's with Secretary Christine knows. We know.

We saw her just earlier today on the border in Texas with a border patrol. That is when she made that claim that this woman was trying to use her vehicle to attack ICE officers as they attempted to dig their cars out of the snow. Now, that this video has emerged and so many people have seen. It'll be interesting to see if she sticks with that narrative.

What we can expect, because we haven't seen any wiggle room on this from DHS or from Trump or anyone today, is that they do consider this to be an act of oppression. They call it domestic terrorism. And we can expect for them to continue to blame the driver here and to support the officer saying that he was defending himself. But yes, that will be in just under two hours here.

She's now going to be on the ground in Minneapolis. She was just on the run Minneapolis yesterday, doing a ride along with ICE officers to show what the agency was doing as they've drastically expanded their scope in Minneapolis. There I am. Okay, I'm going to go to Tom Witter now, who's our law enforcement correspondent.

Tom, we're seeing some concern, I think, from the local official officials who have a much different narrative or their interpretation of what happened here versus the federal officials. And that probably opens the question of exactly who is going to be responsible for this investigation. What would be your expectation? Could there be parallel investigations?

Is there a certain level of jurisdiction that occurs in a case like this? How could this potentially play out? Well, I want to be clear on a couple of different things. One, I think from a law enforcement perspective for law enforcement says that they don't, they don't like the way that the shooting looks.

And in speaking with people from law enforcement from that part of the country, they use a phrase that is sometimes heard in law enforcement circles, lawful but awful. They don't like the look of it. But from a legal perspect, it might be. Okay to get specific to your question.

Okay, legally, I should say to get specific to your question. This case is going to be investigated by the FBI first and foremost because involves a shooting, shooting by a federal law enforcement officer. That's protocol. That's going to happen.

The FBI out with a statement saying that that is going to be the case. So that we know for sure. For sure. Just to read people the policy for the Department of Homeland Security, which of course is the umbrella organization for ice.

It says DHS leo. So law enforcement officer may use deadly force only when the law enforcement officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO or to another person. These videos, you guys have done such an incredible job of breaking it down, but we see the evidence you can garner from it already only shows us a specific moment in time. It doesn't show us what led up to this.

It doesn't show us why a bunch of ICE cars are surrounding this particular. Or did this car drive into an area where ICE officers were, did they surround this person? What did this person say? What didn't they say?

And so it's a difficult situation for us to sit here and play kind of almost Monday morning quarterbacking of a law enforcement investigation without knowing the totality of the circumstance. Certainly, you know, the idea of calling it domestic terrorism so quickly afterwards, that has a legal connotation that goes to motive. So either they have a reason to say that or they're calling it just to call it that. And I think that's gonna be a big question.

As Julie alluded to, it's 6pm today. Do they have a motive? Do they know anything about this individual in particular? But the DHS policy and most policies in law enforcement are pretty, pretty wide when it comes to when an officer believes that they're in a situation where their personal, their personal well being or that of others could be in jeopardy, that they can use deadly force.

And it is also in the policy and people should understand this when it comes to law enforce, they don't have to match force with force. You can use force beyond the one that you're presented with. That's along the force continuum. And the last thing that I'll mention is that DHS does prohibit the shooting of a, of using deadly force just to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.

So if the officer wanted to stop this person from moving forward just because they believe that they were going to flee, that would not be permissible. Tons of questions here at this hour. Ryan is the bottom line. Tom, you raised an excellent point, and that is even though we see this video, and I think everybody has drawn their own conclusions as a result of the video and there are multiple angles of it, but there are still so many things that we don't know about what led to getting us to that point, what happened afterwards, who this person is, what was she doing beforehand?

But yet, Monica, at the North Island White House, it seems as though the administration has already decided what they think has happened. President Trump himself putting out a statement as it relates to that. Is there anybody who's thinking maybe we should take a beat and allow this investigation to play out before we make any sort of definitive statement about it? Well, the first official that we heard from Ryan was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who did share one angle of this video and he just shared two simple words saying Domestic terrorism.

That was pretty quickly after this started to bubble up and those different angles were circulating on social media. It was only some time later that the president issued a very lengthy post on his social media platform, which, again, he is presenting his assessment, what he believes. He says he is viewing this based on the clip that he shares also in this post, saying it's a horrible thing to watch. And the president is alleging here that the woman was obviously a professional agitator.

It's unclear exactly what evidence he's basing that on or where he has, if he has been briefed by law enforcement officials, gotten any actual indication or window into motive because it is so early in this investigation to share that. But nevertheless, the president is saying essentially that the woman who was driving the car viciously ran over the ICE officer. Now, again, based on the different angles you've been playing, people can look at that and make their own judgment of what is happening. But it is difficult since we don't have a 360 view of every angle of this.

But the president essentially goes on to say that based on the clip he shared, he says and argues it is hard to believe that the ICE officer is alive, but he says that that officer is now, quote, recovering in the hospital. Now, the president also says that the whole situation is going to be studied clearly. There's going to be an investigation. We're going to hear more about that as you detail with the FBI and others looking into it.

But this is really, then it turns into the political, which is not surprising. We have seen incidents in this kind of vein before, where it is the president who offers his own unvarnished approach and take, and often does make this about the politics of the moment. And we have seen critics of the president, administration do similarly. They are taking their own frustration out on the Trump administration and some of the policy decisions that have been made here.

But, Ryan, we haven't seen the president today. He signed some executive orders earlier this afternoon. It was unclear whether they were going to open that up for press coverage. But at this point, it is this lengthy reaction and the fact that you have the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt and others in the administration simply sharing an image online that says, I stand with ice.

Right. All right, Julia, let's go to you now because I understand you have some information about what the protocols are for ICE agents when it comes to approaching vehicle. Let me tell us about that. Yeah, that's right.

And we did discuss this earlier, and I was very interested to hear, which I'm not to say about the traffic stop. But I've been speaking with people at DHS who are really familiar with ICE training. There's a huge federal law enforcement training center I've had the opportunity to go to, especially as they've really ramped up hiring. Remember, they added or they're attempting to add 10,000 more people to their and what they're told when they approach a vehicle is that they should approach not ever from the front because of course that it could put them in this kind of danger that they're supposed to approach from the side and really a 90 degree angle.

They have what they call a tactical L that can give them some protection whenever they're approaching a vehicle or a person who they think maybe arm coming in from the side. Also trying to make sure there's a crossfire between officers, but that when you're in front of the vehicle, they're told not to approach. They're told not to approach the front and that if a vehicle is moving, firing at it is not what they're supposed to do. It's okay to shoot at someone inside of a car if they are at an immediate threat of death or serious injury, but that they are not supposed to fire at someone to attempt to stop a vehicle.

If you think about it, the way this person fires their gun in that video. So it's not going to stop the woman from, it's not going to stop the car from going toward him. It doesn't make the car inoperable. What it does is of course make it uncontrollable.

And we see that as the vehicle drives off the road. So there is training for situations like this? Of course not. Training doesn't prepare you for every situation.

And of course there's a lot running through the mind of someone who might be worried about a vehicle in this situation. And I do think it's important to know from the video where that officer approached from. Was he one of those who got out of the vehicles that were kind of up the road or was he coming over from the other side towards that gray SUV or white suv, Was he coming that way? So that's how he ended up being in front of the vehicle at that time.

But their training would say to go to the sides, never to the front, and then to be far in front of the vehicle to move out of the way rather than shooting it merely as protocol to protect the officers from being hit by a vehicle. Okay, tomorrow let's go back to you starting to see protesters take to the streets as a result of this Minneapolis is no stranger to these type of protests. We remember everything that happened in the wake of the George Floyd killing. How concerned are law enforcement on the ground about these protests growing and the potential for more violence as a result of this?

Yeah, I think everybody's concerned with that at the moment. So you have what is a law enforcement involved shooting involving a federal law enforcement officer, the incident that we've been looking at and speaking at over the past 15, 20 minutes or so. And then you have what the reaction will be. And so you've got Governor Tim Waltz talking about putting the National Guard on notice that they might be brought in for this.

You're looking at this incident that took place just in the last hour or so of Minneapolis police officers, snowballs being thrown at them, people protesting signs that said FTP expletive T expl the police is what that stands for. You can figure out the expletive on your own. And then as far as the. There's the climate in Minneapolis.

Brian o' Hara is a police chief there. He's a police chief that has spent a lot of time in trying to build up relationship with the community after the death of George Floyd. The killing of George Floyd, obviously the conviction of the officers there that were involved in that. And so that's something that's been top of mind for law enforcement there.

And so the problem that starts to occur here is that there could be an equating of the local police and federal law enforcement officers and that puts everybody at risk. And so the message from the governor was to use your First Amendment right, protest do, you know, do it all legally, do it all lawfully, don't create any damage, don't create a visual of a city that's burning. But obviously we all know the past in Minneapolis. And so this is definitely a concern for law enforcement there.

This video that we're just looking out of, the officers there with the crime scene tape up, that's my immediate concern because you've got to investigate what happened here today. That's going to take time. That has to occur on that street and you're going to have to push people back. You're going to create a barricade, you're going to create law enforcement there.

It's a potential flashpoint. So that's definitely top of mind. I'm not sure anything that they're not thinking about, I can promise you that. Okay, Tom, Jim, Monica, Julia, all of you, please stand by.

We're now going to bring in Lynette, Renee Grandell and Venus to Mars. Lynette was a direct witness of today's shooting. Venus witnessed the aftermath. I want to thank you both for being here on was obviously a very hectic and emotional day.

So Lynette, you witnessed the shooting, correct? Explain to me what you saw and how everything came right. Well, I got up this morning because I was getting messages on social media that our local elementary school over here, two blocks away, was requesting observers to be there while the children were arriving for school on buses because there's ICE had been patrolling around there quite heavily today and there was concern that, that they would abduct parents who were dropping off their children or making sure their children got safely at school. So that ended.

And so it was about 9:30 and I walked actually on this intersection where you can see towards that intersection. And I was going to go home and I got a car drove by me and another friend who were walking along there. And he said, oh, ice is right there in, around the corner in a 300 block of Portland Avenue. So I thought, oh, I better see what's happening there at my video with me on my phone camera.

I should observe there and make sure everybody's ok. So I walked around the corner and there were a lot of ICE vehicles stopped in the middle of the street. Not quite where you see it would be north to the right of what you're looking at right now. And I was also surprised.

There was one vehicle, if you're looking at it now, that was sort of askew in the lane. And I wasn't sure what was going on with that. I didn't see any ICE vehicles or ICE officers in front of it. It seemed that all the activity was pretty far behind it.

Vehicles and ICE officers on foot on both sides of the street. And I was thinking, oh, they must be targeting a house or an apartment or something like that. So I was looking at all of that and there were several of us, I would say, kind of scattered up and down the block on the sidewalks yelling at the ICE officials. And then shortly after I passed this vehicle, I would say less than 60 seconds after I passed her, I heard these three cops shot, shot, sh.

Pop, pop. And I knew it was gunfire and it was pop, pop. And then almost immediately the crash of her hitting that parked car. You can kind of see up there across the street.

It wasn't clear to me if she had been trying, if she had been parked. There's a parking line and then where the ICE officers are standing, you can sort of see the stripes. That's a big bicycle lane. So so, like, the driving lanes are way over there right now.

She's moving into the driving lane right now. No, there is no way. I just want to make a point there. So the.

The area that is covered in snow, that's actually a bike lane. That would not even be an area that a car would drive through. Right. It's a parking lane, and then you'd have to drive across it to get out of the park.

No vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. So they're okay.

So that would indicate, at least to a certain extent, why the car may have been there. But as you said, so when you approached, the car was kind of in that spot. We said at the beginning it was kind of almost in the driving lane, but still in that bike lane to a certain extent. Could you tell?

Could you tell at that point? Was there any sort of conflict where there was a ICE agent yelling at the driver? Was it driving back? Did you see any sense of that?

Yeah, people were blowing their whistles at the ICE agents. The ICE agents were getting out of vehicles, possibly, and walking towards. They were walking in that direction, but I did not realize they might be walking towards that vehicle. So you didn't have any sort of sense when you were walking up then that this vehicle was in any way threatening anyone?

It didn't seem as though the person in the car was trying to agitate or make the situation more difficult for you agents? No, I. I didn't even hear anything from the car. You know, people on the sidewalks were screaming at the ICE agents.

Get out of our neighborhood. That sort of thing. But we were calling whistles and stuff like that. But no.

So we were hearing a conversation. At what point did you recognize and realize that something was happening and what was your experience? So Lynette texted me because she couldn't come over and find out what had happened because the ICE agents were pushing everybody back. Yes.

So I went out because we live nearby, and I could come in from the other angle, and I got to the intersection and I. I discovered that they were doing. The EMTs were doing CPR on someone on the sidewalk right at the intersection. That lasted for about a minute.

She was behind a snowbank. So I just saw the. The activity of doing the cpr. The ambulances couldn't get there because there was so much traffic.

The ICE vehicles had. It's a one way going south. The ICE vehicles had the complete block north of her, behind her block. So when.

When they finally did get over there, I watched as they got the. Whoever they were doing the CPR on onto Stretcher. Onto a stretcher, and then put her into the ambulance and. And drove away.

But there was no rush. There was no sirens. I already know she hadn't made. Was just devastating to watch.

And I was just. Just across the street from it. And so you both. You both live in this neighborhood, correct?

Is that right? Yes, yes, yes. Do you recognize the car? Do you.

Would you have known the one? Do you have any. We don't know her. Right.

Okay. At this point, we don't know that we know her. I mean, I didn't recognize the car. It's, you know, it's a busy neighborhood.

Portland Avenue is a busy street. It's one of the arteries going south of downtown. Especially, you know, in the second half of the day. It's a busy street.

An interesting. Something else you said on that, because, you know, we've all seen the aftermath. We see the actual incident in the aftermath, and it seemed as though this was a pretty chaotic scene for quite a period of time. The way you describe it is as you were walking up, you didn't even realize that there was something going on.

And you knew the RICE agents in the area because of the community group that you have in the situation at your elementary school. Did it really not get that chaotic until the car started pulling out, or was there a sense of tension even before that moment from your. Your viewpoint of it? It didn't get chaotic until the shots were fired.

Right, Right. It was. It was. I was able to cross the street.

I. I started crossing the street to get to the other side. Side to see if something was going on over on that side because I couldn't see much of anything on the even side of the street. And so I was able to cross because the traffic was stopped.

Nobody. ICE agents were all around. Nobody was preventing me from doing anything. It wasn't until I was probably.

I was still on the street, maybe halfway across, and I heard the shots behind me, and that's when things got bad. So I guess I also. I mean, you said you don't know this woman. The President of the United States is.

Described her as a professional agitator. That's his language. But for as far as, you know, she wasn't even a part of this. This text group you had that was alerting people to Isaac just being in the area.

Yeah, I have no idea what she was. No, there was. Yeah. It did not look.

It didn't look like there was any blockade or any. Any intentional trying to. I mean, it was just. We were trying to pay attention to all of.

There was a lot of activity in our neighborhood that we got alerted to since about 6:30 in the morning. And it's continuing. I mean, my social media is blowing up. This has not even stopped them.

They are picking up people all over the place. Yeah, but there wasn't. There wasn't a chaotic scene before the shooting. It just.

That's when it sparked. Yeah. And that's when people rushed out and asked. And there was not a lot of people out there.

It didn't start turning into a protest or people trying to document until after that incident when I was filming the CPR happened. There was still just a handful of us out there. It was not this big chaotic thing. It was just like maybe 25 of us out there, neighbors who came out.

It was not a big chaotic scene. And did either of you at any point see a DHS or ICE vehicle that appeared to be stuck in the snow? I mean, I can't imagine you. You're in a sudden scene, not a driving snow.

I heard there was one on the 3300 block apart. But anywhere near the scene, Anywhere near the scene that you witnessed? Well, that's true. It would be two blocks away.

Two blocks away, yeah. If they're stuck in the snow, people are going to stand and laugh at them and photograph them, but, you know, they're not in danger. Yeah. Okay.

All right. And then the last question I have for you guys just before we go is how concerned are you now about the subsequent protests that did take place, especially given the fact that Minneapolis has already been so much. Been through so much when it comes to those kind of protests? I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not worried about a protest. What I'm worried about is the reaction from the government with what's the rhetoric already that we're hear this professional agitation and all that. That's what I'm worried about.

Yeah, I'm worried about that too, that they will bring in outside agitators. Actually, the protest community in the Twin Cities is pretty well organized and. But it's a lot of the outsiders who come in who try to cause problems. And that, I believe, is what led to some of the burning on Lake Street.

And, and you know, we lived through that, but we were out with other neighbors in the alley that people didn't come through and burn down our garages and houses. Well, I appreciate you both sharing your story. I'm sorry you had to witness that. And you're dealing with all that aftermath.

I hope you and your community can Stay as safe as possible given everything that's happening. But Lynette, Ray Grindell and VS Mars, thank you both for joining me. I really appreciate. Thank you very much.

All right, let's bring back in Jim Cavanaugh and Julia Ainsley to react to what we heard here from Lynette in particular, specifically eyewitness to what took place. Jim, it's interesting, I don't know if you were as interested in what she was explaining about that traffic flow. First of all, that was a one way street and that that area that we've seen in the video where the snow was still covering was a bike lane in a parking lane. Does that change your view of it at all?

Well, I listen carefully like you did Ryan, but still looked to me like that silver SUV and the burgundy SUV where the victim's car were in the traffic lane a little bit. The flow of the traffic lane, you can see the white line, that's the traffic lane, that's the right side of the traffic lane. And that silver SUV is in it as well. And you know, it's got the floor full, front half of it's in the traffic lane.

And the ICE pickup truck on the left side's in the traffic lane. So you know, is that silver SUV an ICE vehicle that was blocking the lane because a block ahead or block and a half or two blocks as Venus described, was there an ICE vehicle stuck in the snow ahead and they were blocking the road. And then Here comes the 37 year old female. Did then she come up and she couldn't get around the silver vehicle, which was an ICE vehicle.

I don't know, maybe the ICE officer that shot was operating that vehicle, the doors wide open, we don't really know. Or is that a citizen vehicle? There's a citizen standing behind it with a white hoodie. So we don't know whose vehicle that is to put that together.

But I still think there's a block of the traffic lane here and that's what's causing the ICE agents to go up to that burg of the SUV because the traffic lane's blocked and they want to talk to the motorists and then it escalates from there. So it's still a lot of things unclear to us right out about that too. Julia, from your experience, I mean you've been along with isis, they've conducted these operations. From what you heard of the witnesses, descriptions of what the environment was at the time leading up to this shooting, said that it wasn't chaotic at that point, that people were screaming at the ICE agents.

I mean, what does that tell you about what led to ultimately this shooting taking place? Well, certainly most ICE ride alongs operations I've been able to witness have not included screaming. They've been actually pretty discreet and they've gone into targeted places where they plan on arresting individuals that they have been targeting for some time. It is different from the narrative that we heard from DHS that this was an ongoing operation where people came out purposely to protest.

I think, Ryan, that's why we're so focused on whether or not that was a traffic lane. It seems like such a small detail, but the question is, was she just someone going about her warning and she's pulling out a parking lane and trying to get out into traffic. There's a another view of this video that one of our producers just sent me that just, it's actually, it's from the same user. It just starts a little before where she, you see her hand coming out of the window, motioning for them to go around her, almost like she wants them to drive around her before she pulls out.

So a lot of questions, but I think at the heart of the matter is that it's a shame that we can't get body camera footage from ice. And I'll tell you why we can't. Of course, so much of officer involved shootings, even going back to Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, really set the stage for people to be using, we're law enforcement to be using body cameras so that there wasn't anything he said, she said in the middle of situations like this that we could get to the truth just based on the viewpoint of the officer. And under the Biden administration, there was a pilot program for eyes officers to start wearing body cameras.

It's the same technology that many local police departments are using across the country. The technology now is so advanced they can even use it to Translate like over 30 languages. I mean, it's pretty amazing. But that's not something that the Trump administration has allocated any more money to.

They still have about 25% of their officers with body cameras and more of them are on the investigative side who actually wear those. And even with the one day beautiful bill that passed this summer making ICE the most well funded law enforcement agency in the country, none of that money went toward body cameras, which would hold officers to a level of accountability, but also quell the tensions that are rising in moments like this. As we think about protests that could erupt in Minneapolis, the police chiefs there begging people to stay peaceful, to stay home, not to Come out and to clash about this, that kind of footage really could answer so many questions. But we have reached out to ICE to try to get any body camera footage, if any of those officers had footage.

Right now, we haven't been able to get anything. But that is really the perspective I think we all want here is a lot longer time period of that video. And to be able to see it from the point of view of that man right there holding that firearm, to see where he approached the vehicle and exactly what kind of danger he might have been in or whether or not he violated his training. Great question, because it wouldn't also, you know, obviously would give us another view of this, but we also might be able to hear the interaction between the officer and the woman in the car.

If, for instance, she was saying, I'm going to run you over, or she was yelling something that was confrontational, perhaps that would give us some level of knowledge about the intent. Here it also appears that the officer might be holding up a phone of his own, so perhaps he was even recording it himself. Is that information that law enforcement would have available to it isn't something that a defense attorney could potentially subpoena? Is Julia right?

Having video from the officer's perspective, wouldn't that give us a lot more information about what happened? Yes, Julia's absolutely right on that. Not only that, but she's absolutely right on to, you know, bring to the forefront of, you know, the officer's positioning in front of the vehicle. As we discussed earlier, you gotta put yourself in a dangerous situation with your officer.

You're all trying to avoid that. And so that's some facts we wanna find out. He came from that silver vehicle. As he walked down the street, Venus told the city there were people walking on the sidewalks.

The ICE officers were walking on the sidewalks. So they were doing an enforcement activity. You know, it's unbelievable to think that 2,000 officers can be deployed like that. It's a lot of officers.

To deploy to a city like Minneapolis and not coordinating with the local police is really unprecedented. You know, we. I spent 33 years at ATF. We coordinated everything with the police.

You know, we always work with the police. Handed glove on. Everything we did, they worked with us. We shared our things so we could not have a BL on blue shooting or confrontation or we didn't know something was going on.

And so there's very unusual way this is happening to deploy that many officers, but they're deployed on the street and they're walking on the street, they're driving in the street. And so there's a lot of activity going on, physical activity. Of course, you have protesters are watching them and filming them and blowing whistles. So it's not chaotic, I wouldn't say.

But there's a lot of activity there. And so we do want to see what did the ICE agent have a phone? Did he have a body camera? And all those cameras gotta be put together.

The angle, the shots has to be put together. Exactly. What did that female driver say? Was she, you know, she's been called a, an activist, but maybe she's not.

Maybe she's the person driving down the street who just stopped and wants to get out of the way. But it really appears that she was not wanting to discuss or engage with the agent. That's a seminal point as well. Okay, Jim Cavaugh and Julia Ainsley, thank you both for your expertise on this breaking news situation that we're all still just digesting in the moment.

I want to go back now to the White House and Monica Alba, Monica Julie said that the Department of Homeland Security is going to brief on this in about an hour and 10 minutes. Is white House referring to them now as this investigation moves forward or should we expect more from the White House today? I think it's likely. Ryan, you're going to hear from the DHS secretary when she speaks and somebody who probably has been in touch with the President on and off today.

Obviously she was traveling and made her way to Minneapolis. But this is kind of situation where typically the President would be briefed and kept up to date on anything that is changing and evolving in real time by his top officials. Earlier today, certainly the White House did defer to DHS as this was all beginning to emerge. And I think you can expect them to have a pretty coordinated and aligned message.

I think they will both stand with isis. We have seen that kind of language come from the White House in the last couple of hours, though I think Secretary Noem certainly, when she spoke earlier today, didn't seem to have all the information or maybe hadn't seen all of the angles that we have now discussed and analyzed and gone through over the course of this program. So perhaps there will be some additional information. Again, it was the President who is sharing his own assessment that he believes that the ICE officer was, quote, acting in self defense.

I think you'll likely hear a little bit more on that from the DHS secretary and that's likely something the White House is going to try to get more information on and be able to try to expand and argue again as their main point here. But as you know, Ryan, there's also been so much political back and forth with the governor of Minnesota with Tim Walls, who announced recently that he's dropping his reelection bid. There had been plenty of back and forth with this administration and the state over those claims as allegations of fraud when it comes to those child cases, care centers. So Minnesota is a topic that really had been pretty high on the list of the White House in the last couple of weeks.

And I think you can expect them to have more to say overall. And again, they will likely lean into this moment politically as we are seeing Democrats and critics of the administration in the White House do also in this moment. Ryan okay, Mike Alba, stand by for us. If you get anything new, please let us know when we're on and talk about it.

But we appreciate that report. Let's bring our panel out to talk about all this. Susan Page, USA Today Washington Bureau chief Kendra Barkoff, former press secretary to then Vice President Biden, now managing director at skdk, and Stephen Hanks, the editor and CEO of the Dispatch and NBC News contributor. I want to start where Michael left off.

This would be a political hotbed if this incident happened anywhere in the country. But the fact that it's happening in Minnesota, which has already become a focal point of some of the biggest political conversations we're having in America, I mean, how, how concerned are you that this could be the start of something that could be pretty ugly over the next couple of days? You know, it could there's so much we don't know. And the only stuff I think is really on DHS at their news conference to explain why they came to the conclusion, made the assertion that this was an attempt to an act of domestic terrorism, that the woman who was killed was a professional agitator.

Because we don't have, we at the moment don't have that evidence. And so it fuels this, I think, enormous reaction that people have just from looking at the video where it does not seem that she was doing anything that should have warranted shooting her dead. I remember it doesn't seem that long ago an incident like this would happen. Both Republicans and Democrats would take a deep breath.

They wouldn't try and say anything that could be even viewed as politics at all. I'm going to show you two statements. This is from the Omar her she of course represents Minnesota. This administration has shown yet again that it does not care about the safety of Minnesotans.

Instead of protecting our communities, they're unleashing violence, terrorizing neighborhoods and now killing a civilian for weeks, isis, so called Operation Metro Surge to spread fear, chaos and violence across the state. This is not law enforcement, it is state violence. Now, another person that represents Minnesota, the Republican Whip, Tom Emmer, he said someone lost their life today. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, but we've got to let law enforcement do its job before the politicians or anyone else jumps to conclusions.

May God bless them and bless the work that they're doing. He goes on to defend the ICE officers involved in this. Is there the possibility that we may never get as clear as possible, an indication and understanding what happened here? Because the politics is going to clap?

Yes, I think that's likely. I think you did a good job in your conversation before ours of encouraging people to take a step back and let's wait for more information. That's the responsible thing to do. We're not seeing our politicians do that.

Donald Trump doesn't have any idea whether this is domestic terrorism. He doesn't know that her motives were vicious. I can describe her as viciously trying to run down. We don't know that.

We don't know this information. It's irresponsible. Unfortunate that he or Ilhan Omar on the other side would jump to conclusions based on this lack of information. But this is our politics today.

I think it's exactly why to your question, Susan, we can expect that this will be a big problem in a highly charged environment over the coming days. So to seeking this point, Kendra, we saw the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, use some very harsh language directed at. We saw the governor as well attack the administration for ICE's role there. Do they have a responsibility to tone down a bit of the rhetoric and let this investigation play itself out?

Of course they do. I think everybody across the board does. I will say that I think the governor's rhetoric was a little bit more subdued. I think he called for people to protest in the right way, which is exercise your First Amendment rights.

But obviously, like everybody's watching, all eyes are on us. Let's try and do the right thing. We don't want to do the thing that will feed into what the rhetoric is, which is why Donald Trump will say the fires, the chaos, and remember, this happened in a place that is very close to where George Floyd was murdered. And so I think there will be the.

This could lead to a lot of protests and issues that he obviously doesn't want to happen. So Americans want some credibility about the version of truth. Right? Americans probably open to hearing alternative Narratives that say this agent felt that he was actually in peril.

But is there going to be an investigation that gives Americans a sense of confidence that they've discovered what really happened? I'm not sure that that's. I'm sure it's possible. I was taking the same thing as I was listening to you talk to the previous panel and the discussion of an FBI investigation that will now be launched.

What's the likelihood that the FBI is going to be able to do a fair and partial investigation when you have the President of the United States already offering the conclusion of what that investigation is, and Congress has completely said we're going to wash our hands of anything oversight related? There's no hearings. There's no transparency or credibility. They themselves have an obligation to hold hearings and to look into these kinds of things.

And they've said, no, we're not going to do that. If you even put it out further, and to Steven's point, there's a possibility that the FBI will conduct an investigation and determine what outcome, and a state or local district attorney may do a parallel investigation and draw a completely different conclusion. That could even not sound too like the sky's falling here, but almost a constitutional crisis. So you can choose your version of the truth, which is what we increasingly have on everything from this kind of shooting, perhaps to whether to get vaccinations.

So that emotion of confidence that there's any source, any institution you can trust to tell you the truth about big things, that is a. That is a real constitutional crisis. And with any confidence that there's a leader out there that could be calm things down in this moment. I'm still looking.

I think we all are. Yeah. Okay. All right, guys, thank you for being here.

A very difficult day and having a very nice, responsible conversation about what we saw play out here today in the. Susan Penderstein, thank you all for being here. We're gonna be back tomorrow with more Meet the Press now for more, especially on this shooting in Minneapolis. There is more news ahead on NBC News now.

Thank you so much for watching. He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together.

Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Daylight. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts.