About 1,000 people showed up outside Dallas City Hall and marched through downtown streets Thursday evening to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.
Protestors demanded justice for the woman, Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer after agents told her to get out of her vehicle and it began moving.
Sarah Tejeda said she got off a 12-hour work shift to show up and protest Good's death.
"This isn't the America I grew up in," Tejeda said. "This is just a whirlwind of injustice, and, you know, I don't believe that she deserved to go the way she did — it was brutal."
Protestors began marching through downtown Dallas at about 8 p.m. Thursday. Police blocked off traffic to let the crowd march the streets. Bystanders stopped to wave in support or pull out their phones to record the event.
The protest was one of many that happened across the country in the wake of Good's death. Federal and local officials have given drastically different accounts of the incident.
Minneapolis City Council members released a joint statement saying Good was a resident out caring for her neighbors in the morning when she was killed.
Department of Homeland Security officials described the incident in an X post as an act of "domestic terrorism," and said Good was an "anti-ICE rioter" who weaponized her vehicle against law enforcement.
Robert Cerna, acting director of the Dallas ICE field office, told CBS Evening News on Wednesday the killing was a tragic event but couldn't say more, adding that there was an on-going investigation.
Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua described the killing as a "cold-blooded murder" in a statement to KERA.
"This type of lawlessness is exactly why we as a City Council stood firm with our [Dallas Police Department] chief and told ICE that they are not welcome in our city," Bazaldua said in the statement.
ICE began increasing operations in Minnesota on Dec. 1 as part of Operation Metro Surge. That ICE presence only increased after a YouTuber alleged in a Dec. 26 video that Somali-run daycares were fraudulently collecting tax dollars. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families has since conducted compliance checks on the day care centers in the video and found them to be running as expected, but they also gathered evidence for further review.
By Jan. 6, just a day before Good would be killed, Secretary Kristi Noem said 2,000 more ICE and Homeland Security Investigations officers had surged to the state to uncover fraud. DHS said in a post to X its the largest operation the department has ever done.
Jerry Reneau, a lifelong Democrat, told KERA at the Dallas demonstration he will continue to protest, but that he was growing frustrated with Democrats' response to ICE.
"I'm afraid they're getting more used to it than they should," Reneau said. "That's the scary part for me."
Reneau said he fears the Trump administration has done lasting damage to the country.
"We'll never have the America we used to have again," Reneau said. "And that's heartbreaking to me."
Dylan Duke is KERA's Breaking News Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.
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