civil

A federal officer in the United States has shot a Venezuelan man in the leg in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Officials say officers had tried to stop a car to arrest the man and opened fire after two people attacked one of them with a “snow shovel and broom handle”.

Protests broke out in the city after the incident.

Wednesday’s shooting comes exactly a week after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed local resident Renee Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis during an immigration raid.

What happened?

In an X post on Wednesday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote that at 6:50pm (00:50 GMT on Thursday), federal law enforcement officers were stopping “an illegal alien from Venezuela who was released into the country by [former President] Joe Biden in 2022”.

The DHS added that the man had tried to evade the officers, crashing his car into another parked car and then fleeing on foot. It said one of the officers caught up with the immigrant on foot “when the subject began to resist and violently assault the officer”.

The department’s post said that while the immigrant and the officer were struggling on the ground, two people came out of a nearby apartment and began to strike the officer with a snow shovel and a broomstick. It further said, “The original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.”

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg,” the DHS wrote.

It added that the immigrant and the two people who had come out of the apartment ran back inside the apartment and barricaded themselves in.

The immigrant and officer who was attacked were taken to hospital, and the other two people who attacked the officer are in custody, DHS wrote.

Who was Renee Nicole Good and what happened to her last week?

On the morning of January 7, Jonathan Ross, an ICE officer, fatally shot Good while she was in her car in Minneapolis.

Local officials said Good, 37, was acting as a legal observer during protests against US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Legal observers are usually volunteers who attend protests to watch police-demonstrator interactions and record any confrontations or possible legal violations.

Good’s killing sparked outrage and protests in Minnesota and nationwide.

In a joint statement released after she was shot dead, Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne and council members wrote: “Renee was a resident of our city who was out caring for her neighbors this morning and her life was taken today at the hands of the federal government. Anyone who kills someone in our city deserves to be arrested, investigated, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

After Good was shot, the Republican Trump administration clashed with local authorities, including Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

Trump and administration officials claimed that Good had deliberately hit the ICE officer with her SUV and he had shot her in self-defence.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism”.

She said Good had refused to obey orders to get out of her car, “weaponise[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” over the officer. Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to drive away.

Footage from the incident shows Good’s car slowly reversing and then trying to move forwards. As the car moves forwards, an agent is seen walking around in front of it. He opens fire while standing in front of the driver’s side of the SUV.

Speaking about the shooting on Wednesday, Trump told the Reuters news agency: “I don’t get into right or wrong. I know that it was a tough situation to be in. There was very little respect shown to the police, in this case, the ICE officers.”

What have local authorities said about the latest shooting?

Walz wrote in an X post on Wednesday that state investigators have been to the scene of the shooting.

“I know you’re angry. I’m angry. What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets,” Walz wrote.

“But Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace. Don’t give him what he wants.”

In a series of posts on X on Wednesday, Frey wrote: “No matter what led up to this incident, the situation we are seeing in our city is not sustainable.”

He added that there are 600 local police officers working in Minneapolis, and the Trump administration has sent in 3,000 federal officers.

“I have seen conduct from ICE that is intolerable. And for anyone taking the bait tonight, stop. It is not helpful. We cannot respond to Donald Trump’s chaos with our own chaos.”

What is ICE doing in Minnesota?

The DHS launched Operation Metro Surge, which includes Minneapolis, in December. The Trump administration said the operation aims to root out and arrest criminals and undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration escalated its immigration operation in Minneapolis on January 6. In an X post, ICE announced it planned to deploy 2,000 additional agents to the northern Midwestern city.

“A 100% chance of ICE in the Twin Cities – our largest operation to date,” the post said, referring to Minneapolis and the adjacent city of St Paul.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, told local news media that ICE is “surging to Minneapolis to root out fraud, arrest perpetrators and remove criminal illegal aliens”.

On Monday, the state of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the operation is an unconstitutional “federal invasion”.

The population of Minnesota is more than 5 million people, and according to numbers from the Migration Policy Institute from 2023, the number of undocumented immigrants in the state is 100,000.

Republicans have made disparaging remarks particularly targeting the state’s Somali population.

Noem said on Tuesday that Trump intends to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for some Somali nationals in the US.

“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” Noem said in a statement. “Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”

In December, ICE launched a raid in Columbus, Ohio, which also has a large Somali population. In late November, ICE agents were deployed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Similar raids were launched in Charlotte, North Carolina, the same month.

How many Venezuelan immigrants are in the US?

As of 2023, there were about 770,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, making up just under 2 percent of the country’s 47.8 million foreign-born population, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The institute estimated that in 2023, 486,000 Venezuelan immigrants were not authorised to be in the US, accounting for 4 percent of a total of 13.7 million unauthorised immigrants.

Since 2014, about 7.7 million Venezuelans, comprising 20 percent of the population, have left the country, mostly to seek better opportunities abroad as the economy has faltered and the government has cracked down on the political opposition. While the vast majority have moved to neighbouring countries, some have gone to the US.

On January 3, US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration describes as a “narcoterrorist”. He currently faces charges related to weapons and drug trafficking in New York.

During a national address on January 3, Trump stated: “Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang, Tren de Aragua, to terrorise American communities nationwide.”

However, several US intelligence agencies have rejected the claim that Trump has repeatedly made that Maduro controls Tren de Aragua. In an April memo, the agencies said Maduro’s government “probably does not” cooperate with the gang or direct it to carry out operations in the US.

Colvin’s arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement in the US.

Claudette Colvin, who helped to ignite the modern civil rights movement in the US after refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus, has died aged 86.

Colvin was 15 when she was arrested on a bus in Montgomery, nine months before Rosa Parks gained international fame for also refusing to give up her seat.

Colvin died of natural causes in Texas, according to a statement from her legacy foundation on Tuesday.

Colvin was detained on March 2, 1955, after a bus driver called the police to complain that two Black girls were sitting near two white women in violation of segregation laws. Colvin refused to move when asked, leading to her arrest.

“I remained seated because the lady could have sat in the seat opposite me,” Colvin told reporters in Paris in April 2023.

“She refused because… a white person wasn’t supposed to sit close to a negro,” Colvin said.

“People ask me why I refused to move, and I say history had me glued to the seat,” she added.

Colvin was briefly imprisoned for disturbing public order. The following year, she became one of four Black female plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging segregated bus seating in Montgomery.

The case was successful, impacting public transportation throughout the US, including trains, aeroplanes and taxis.

Colvin’s arrest occurred at a time of growing frustration over how Black people were being treated on Montgomery’s bus system. The arrest of Parks in December 1955 triggered the start of the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The boycott propelled the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr into the national limelight and is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement.

“She leaves behind a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history,” the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation said in a statement.

‘Too often overlooked’

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Colvin’s action “helped lay the legal and moral foundation for the movement that would change America”.

Colvin’s role in helping to trigger the modern civil rights movement is often overshadowed by the actions of Parks, and Reed said her bravery “was too often overlooked”.

“Claudette Colvin’s life reminds us that movements are built not only by those whose names are most familiar, but by those whose courage comes early, quietly, and at great personal cost,” Reed added.

While Colvin’s arrest helped to bring an end to racial segregation in the US, there are concerns from civil rights groups that President Donald Trump is looking to roll back policies on social progress.

On Tuesday, the largest civil rights group in the US said that Trump was being deceptive in his claims that civil rights hurt white people.

In an interview from last week published by The New York Times, Trump said he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being treated unfairly.

The comments came after Trump was asked whether protections that began in the 1960s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act resulted in discrimination against white men, according to the newspaper.

“It accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people – people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job,” Trump was quoted as saying.

“It was a reverse discrimination,” he said.

In response, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Trump was “lying through his teeth”.

“Trump does this all the time. He deliberately invents a false reality to lay the groundwork for policies that further benefit the top one percent by privatising government services and stripping resources away from underserved communities,” said Johnson.

Polls have opened in 100 townships across the country, with the military claiming 52 percent turnout in the first round.

Myanmar has resumed voting in the second phase of the three-part general elections amid a raging civil war and allegations the polls are designed to legitimise military rule.

Polling stations opened at 6am local time on Sunday (23:30 GMT on Saturday) across 100 townships in parts of Sagaing, Magway, Mandalay, Bago and Tanintharyi regions, as well as Mon, Shan, Kachin, Kayah and Kayin states.

Many of those areas have seen clashes in recent months or remain under heightened security.

Myanmar has been ravaged by conflict since the military ousted ⁠a civilian government in a 2021 coup and arrested its leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, leading to ​a civil war that has engulfed large parts of the impoverished nation of 51 million people.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s ‍National League for Democracy party, which swept the last election in 2020, has been dissolved along with dozens of other antimilitary parties for failing to register for the latest polls.

The election is taking place in three phases because of the ongoing conflict. The first phase unfolded on December 28 in 102 of the country’s 330 townships, while a third round is scheduled for January 25.

Some 65 townships will not participate due to ongoing clashes.

The military claimed a 52 percent voter turnout after the December 28 vote, while the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which analysts say is a civilian proxy for the military, said it won more than 80 percent of seats contested in the lower house of the legislature.

“The USDP is on track for a landslide victory, which is hardly a surprise given the extent to which the playing field was tilted in ​its favour. This included the removal of any serious rivals and a set of ‌laws designed to stifle opposition to the polls,” said Richard Horsey, senior Myanmar adviser for Crisis Group.

Myanmar has a two-house national legislature, totalling 664 seats. The party with a combined parliamentary majority can select the new president, who can pick a cabinet and form a new government. The military automatically receives 25 percent of seats in each house under the constitution.

On Sunday morning, people in Yangon, the country’s largest city, cast their ballots at schools, government offices and religious buildings, including in Aung San Suu Kyi’s former constituency of Kawhmu, located roughly 25km (16 miles) south of the city.

As she exited her polling station, 54-year-old farmer Than Than Sint told the AFP news agency she voted because she wants peace in Myanmar, even though she knows it will come slowly given the fractured country’s “problems”.

Still, “I think things will be better after the election”, she said.

Others were less enthusiastic. A 50-year-old resident of Yangon, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said, “The results lie only in the mouth of the military.”

“People have very little interest in this election,” the person added. “This election has absolutely nothing to do with escaping this suffering.”

The United Nations and human rights groups have called the elections a “sham” that attempt to sanitise the military’s image.

Tom Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said earlier this week that the election was “not a free, fair, nor legitimate election” by “all measures”.

“It is a theatrical performance that has exerted enormous pressure on the people of Myanmar to participate in what has been designed to dupe the international community,” Andrews said.

Laws enacted by the military ahead of the vote have made protest or criticism of the elections punishable by up to 10 years in prison. More than 200 people currently face charges under the measure, the UN said, citing state media.

Separately, at least 22,000 people are currently being detained in Myanmar for political offences, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Yangon, Myanmar – Voters in parts of Myanmar are heading to the polls on Sunday for an election that critics view as a bid by the country’s generals to legitimise military rule, nearly five years after they overthrew the government of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The multi-phased election is unfolding amid a raging civil war, with ethnic armed groups and opposition militias fighting the military for control of vast stretches of territory, stretching from the borderlands with Bangladesh and India in the west, across the central plains, to the frontiers with China and Thailand in the north and east.

In central Sagaing, voting will take place in only a third of the region’s townships on Sunday. Another third will be covered during a second and third phase in January, while voting has been cancelled altogether in the remainder.

Fighting, including air raids and arson, has intensified in several areas.

“The military is deploying troops and burning villages under the guise of ‘territorial dominance’,” said Esther J, a journalist based there. “People here are saying this is being done for the election.”

In most of the region, “we haven’t seen a single activity related to the election,” she said. “No one is campaigning, organising or telling people to vote.”

Across Myanmar, voting has been cancelled in 56 of the country’s 330 townships, with more cancellations expected. The conflict, triggered by the 2021 coup, has killed an estimated 90,000 people and displaced more than 3.5 million, according to monitoring groups and the United Nations. It has left nearly half of the country’s population of 55 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

“People [in Sagaing] say they have no interest in the election,” said Esther J. “They do not want the military. They want the revolutionary forces to win.”

Shifting battlefield

For much of last year, the Myanmar military appeared to be losing ground.

A coordinated offensive launched in late 2023 by the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of ethnic armed groups and opposition militias – seized vast areas, nearly pushing the military out of western Rakhine state and capturing a major regional military headquarters in the northeastern city of Lashio, about 120km (75 miles) from the Chinese border. Armed with commercial drones modified to carry bombs, the rebels were soon threatening the country’s second-largest city of Mandalay.

The operation – dubbed 1027 – marked the most significant threat to the military since the 2021 coup.

But the momentum has stalled this year, largely because of China’s intervention.

In April, Beijing brokered a deal in which the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army agreed to surrender the city of Lashio, without a single shot being fired. The military subsequently reclaimed key towns in north and central Myanmar, including Nawnghkio, Thabeikkyin, Kyaukme and Hsipaw. In late October, China brokered another agreement for the Ta’ang National Liberation Army to withdraw from the gold mining towns of Mogok and Momeik.

“The Myanmar military is definitely resurgent,” said Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “If this current trend continues, the Myanmar military could be back in a relatively dominant position in a year or so, maybe two.”

The military turned the tide by launching a conscription drive, expanding its drone fleet and putting more combat credible soldiers in charge. Since announcing mandatory military service in February 2024, it has recruited between 70,000 to 80,000 people, researchers say.

“The conscription drive has been unexpectedly effective,” said Min Zaw Oo, executive director at the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security. “Economic hardship and political polarisation pushed many young men into the ranks,” he said, with many of the recruits technically adept and serving as snipers and drone operators. “The military’s drone units now outmatch those of the opposition,” he added.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a monitoring group, air and drone attacks by the military have increased by roughly 30 percent this year. The group recorded 2,602 air attacks that it said killed 1,971 people – the highest toll since the coup. It said Myanmar now ranks third in the world for drone operations, behind only Ukraine and Russia.

China, meanwhile, has applied pressure beyond brokering ceasefires.

According to analysts, Beijing pressed one of the strongest armed ethnic groups, the United Wa State Army, to cut off weapons supplies to other rebels, resulting in ammunition shortages across the country. The opposition forces have also suffered from disunity. “They are as fragmented as ever,” said Michaels of the IISS. “Relationships between these groups are deteriorating, and the ethnic armed organisations are abandoning the People’s Defence Forces,” he said, referring to the opposition militias that mobilised after the coup.

China’s calculations

China, observers say, acted for fear of a state collapse in Myanmar.

“The situation in Myanmar is a ‘hot mess’, and it’s on China’s border,” said Einar Tangen, a Beijing-based analyst at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Beijing, he said, wants to see peace in Myanmar to protect key trade routes, including the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor that, when completed, will link its landlocked Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean and a deep seaport there.

Tangen said Beijing harbours no love for the military, but sees few alternatives.

Indeed, after the coup, Beijing refrained from normalising relations with Myanmar or recognising coup leader Min Aung Hlaing. But in a sign of shifting policy, Chinese President Xi Jinping met Min Aung Hlaing twice this year. During talks in China’s Tianjin in August, Xi told Min Aung Hlaing that Beijing supports Myanmar in safeguarding its sovereignty, as well as “in unifying all domestic political forces” and “restoring stability and development”.

Tangen said China sees the election as a path to more predictable governance. Russia and India, too, have backed the process, though the UN and several Western nations have called it a “sham”. But Tangen noted that while Western nations denounce the military, they have done little to engage with the rebels. The United States has dealt further blows by cutting off foreign aid and ending visa protections for Myanmar citizens.

“The West is paying lip service to the humanitarian crisis. China’s trying to do something but doesn’t know how to solve it,” Tangen said.

Limited gains, lasting war

The military’s territorial gains, meanwhile, remain modest.

In northern Shan state, Myanmar’s largest, the military has recaptured only 11.3 percent of the territory it had lost, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar, a think tank. But it is western Rakhine State that remains the “larger and more intense theatre of war”, said Khin Zaw Win, a Yangon-based analyst.

There, the Arakan Army is pushing beyond the borders of the state, overrunning multiple bases, and pushing east in a move that threatens the military’s defence industries. In northern Kachin state, the battle for Bhamo, a gateway to the north, is approaching its first anniversary, while in the southeast, armed groups have taken a “number of important positions along the border with Thailand”, he said.

So the military’s recent gains in other parts were “not that significant”, he added.

ACLED, the war monitor, also described the military’s successes as “limited in the context of the overall conflict”. In a briefing this month, Su Mon, a senior analyst at ACLED, wrote that the military remains in a “weakened position compared to before the 2021 coup and Operation 1027 and is unable to assert effective control over the areas it has recently retaken”.

Still, the gains give the military “more confidence to proceed with the elections”, said Khin Zaw Win.

The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which has fielded the most candidates, is expected to form the next government. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has been dissolved, and she remains held incommunicado, while other smaller opposition parties have been barred from participating.

Khin Zaw Win said he does not expect the election to “affect the war to any appreciable extent” and that the military might even be “deluded to go for a complete military victory”.

But on the other hand, China could help de-escalate, he said.

“China’s mediation efforts are geared toward a negotiated settlement,” he noted. “It expects a ‘payoff’ and does not want a protracted war that will harm its larger interests.”

Zaheena Rasheed wrote and reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Cape Diamond reported from Yangon, Myanmar.

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for President Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn’t rule from the bench after hearing arguments from Trump attorneys and lawyers for Democratic members of Congress who sued the Republican president and allies over the Jan. 6. 2021, attack.

Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump’s attorneys argue that his conduct leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day of the riot is protected by presidential immunity because he was acting in his official capacity.

“The entire point of immunity is to give the president clarity to speak in the moment as the commander-in-chief,” Trump attorney Joshua Halpern told the judge.

The lawmakers’ lawyers argue Trump can’t prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. And the U.S. Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity, they contend.

“President Trump has the burden of proof here,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers. “We submit that he hasn’t come anywhere close to satisfying that burden.”

At the end of Friday’s hearing, Mehta said the arguments gave him “a lot to think about” and he would rule “as soon as we can.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation.

The civil claims survived Trump’s sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. Over 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.

Halpern said immunity enables the president to act “boldly and fearlessly.”

“Immunity exists to protect the president’s prerogatives,” he said.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the context and circumstances of the president’s remarks on Jan. 6 — not just the content of his words — are key to establishing whether he is immune from liability.

“You have to look at what happened leading up to January 6th,” Sellers said.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.