Mayor warns activists after fatal ICE shooting

MINNEAPOLIS:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Saturday urged demonstrators protesting the fatal shooting of a motorist by a US immigration agent to stay peaceful, saying that any unlawful actions would play into US President Donald Trump's hands.

Frey, a Democrat, cautioned them as civil liberties and migrant-rights groups prepared nationwide rallies to protest the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday. Minnesota and US officials have offered starkly different accounts of the shooting.

Twenty-nine people were arrested overnight in Minneapolis as police responded to protests, including a gathering of demonstrators outside a hotel believed to be lodging a visiting contingent of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, city Police Chief Brian O'Hara said.

One police officer was injured in the response, O'Hara told a news conference on Saturday.

Frey, who has been critical of immigration agents and the shooting, said the demonstrations to date have remained mostly peaceful and that anyone causing damage to property or engaging in other unlawful activity would be arrested by the police.

"We will not counter Donald Trump's chaos with our own brand of chaos. He wants us to take the bait," Frey said at the news conference.

The fatal shooting of Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the "largest DHS operation ever."