In the United States, new shootings by immigration police injure two people in Portland

The situation is getting worse in the United States: two people were injured by immigration police shootings in Portland, Oregon, this Thursday. “Two people were hospitalized following a shooting involving federal agents,” municipal police explained in a statement, with the FBI confirming the involvement of border police.

These shootings follow the death of a 37-year-old American woman, Renée Good, on Wednesday in Minneapolis, hit by a point-blank shot from an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) police officer.

This death triggered a wave of indignation throughout the country: this American woman was unarmed and was trying to get away from immigration agents at the wheel of her vehicle. A police officer then came up to the vehicle before shooting the driver three times in the head.

The circumstances of the shootings in Portland have not yet been made public. But the state of tension has been at its peak in the United States since Wednesday. Portland is located in the northwest corner of the United States, between California and Canada. The city has a very strong tradition of protest, and the presence of the ICE, for several months, has sparked numerous demonstrations.

Maximum voltage state

Earlier on Thursday, Vice President of the United States JD Vance declared, referring to the tragedy in Minneapolis, that immigration agents benefited from “total immunity”. Comments which made part of the population cringe, who saw in them a blank check given to the police for all their actions, including the most violent.

Since their large-scale deployment in many cities in the United States, ICE and Border Protection agents have regularly been attacked by part of the population, who try to protect people in an irregular situation by delaying the interventions of these law enforcement agencies.

Images of confrontations between activists and agents are widely relayed on social networks, but until now the excesses had been rather rare. Before today, nine episodes of shootings fired by ICE had been recorded by the American press since September. Mostly against people who were trying to escape controls.