OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
2:45 PM – Saturday, January 24, 2026
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz condemned the Trump administration after a fatal shooting involving Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, calling the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers an “absolute abomination.”
“This federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state,” Walz (D-Minn.) stated. “And today that campaign claimed another life.”
The Democrat governor said that he found the videos of the person’s scuffle with law enforcement “sickening,” before launching into a “strong statement” directed to Washington.
“I have a strong statement here for … our federal government. Minnesota’s justice system will have the last word on this. It must have the last word,” he said.
Walz referenced his earlier social media post in which he announced that he had spoken with the White House immediately after the incident. He revealed during the press conference what he told officials.
“The federal government cannot be trusted,” he declared. “The state will handle it, period.”
He went on to argue that there is “a difference” between Minnesotans’ motivations and intentions and the federal government’s — “We want calm and peace and normalcy back to our lives, they want chaos,” he argued.
“Minnesota and our local law enforcement, as you have seen, have done everything possible to de-escalate,” Governor Walz said, despite his own fiery comments and omission of facts surrounding both the most recent shooting and the shooting of Renee Good earlier this month.
After Good was killed while threatening law enforcement officers with her car, causing one to suffer internal bleeding, Walz held a press conference where he said that the state was “at war” with the federal government.
Additionally, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D-Minn.) has also responded strongly to law enforcement, characterizing the deployment of federal agents to the city as an “occupation” and saying that his “great American city” was “being invaded by its own federal government.” He described the incident on Saturday as “masked agents pummeling” a citizen before shooting him.
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