Tension rise in US as immigration officers shoot 2 in traffic stop

Tensions over United States President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown rose across the U.S. on Thursday, January 8, 2026, after the second shooting involving immigration officers in two days.

The incident has deepened rifts between state and federal officials over how and why the shootings occurred.

Protests intensified in Minnesota following Wednesday’s fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Minnesota and U.S. officials offered starkly different accounts of the shooting, and state investigators complained they were shut out of the federal inquiry.

In Oregon a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland on Thursday afternoon.

Again, local officials, who immediately called for calm, said they could not verify the federal government’s account of the incident.

US immigration agents injured in Maryland shooting

In both cases, Democratic mayors and governors demanded the Trump administration withdraw federal officers, who have been deployed largely to Democratic-led cities in moves approved of by many of the president’s supporters after Trump campaigned on a promise to deport undocumented immigrants.

Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the aggressive enforcement operations as an unnecessary provocation, Reuters reported.

“When a president endorses tearing families apart and attempts to govern through fear and hate rather than shared values, you foster an environment of lawlessness and recklessness,” Oregon Governor Tina Kotek said.

In both the Minneapolis and Portland shootings, U.S. officials contend they were part of a increasing trend of criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists using their cars as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes contradicted their claims.

The Star