Coverup in Minneapolis?

Why the FBI shut out Minnesota investigators after an ICE shooting

In the final analysis, this is why ICE doesn’t want to be filmed. Because what they claim happened and what multiple videos show are two very different things. Once independent state and local investigators began looking into what happened Wednesday morning — when ICE shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a thirty-seven-year-old Minneapolis mother of three and a U.S. citizen — those videos were always going to matter.

Minnesota’s own investigators were initially supposed to help determine what happened. According to Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans, the plan — agreed to with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and federal prosecutors — was for a joint investigation. The BCA responded to the scene, began coordinating investigative work, and did so, Evans says, in good faith.

Then the ground shifted.

Later that same day, the FBI informed the BCA that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had changed its mind. The investigation would now be handled solely by the FBI. State investigators were cut off entirely — no access to case materials, no scene evidence, no interviews. In Evans’ words, that made it impossible for Minnesota to conduct “a thorough and independent investigation.” The BCA has now withdrawn, reluctantly, because it has no way to do its job.

That alone should set off alarms.

When a federal agent kills a civilian, transparency matters. Independent oversight matters. Cutting state investigators out of the process doesn’t build confidence. It destroys it.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem responded by attacking Minnesota officials, accusing them of “not doing their work” and suggesting they should be out policing protests instead. That’s a neat deflection, but it ignores a basic fact: state investigators didn’t walk away. They were pushed out.

Meanwhile, protests against aggressive immigration enforcement are spreading well beyond Minneapolis — to New York, Seattle, Detroit, Washington, Los Angeles, San Antonio, New Orleans, and Chicago. People are reacting not just to this shooting, but to what looks like a familiar pattern: force, followed by spin, delay, and now a deliberate restriction of oversight.

If federal authorities truly believed this shooting was justified, the obvious move would be openness — shared evidence, parallel investigations, daylight. Blocking Minnesota’s investigative agency from even seeing the materials raises a harder question.

What, exactly, are they afraid state investigators would find?

The answer seems obvious. They know their narrative doesn’t hold. They know the videos show what really happened. They know they’re in the wrong. But they also appear to believe they don’t have to answer to the American people — and they’re acting accordingly.