Hours after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman on Wednesday, community members from different organizations gathered for a candlelight vigil outside the Champaign City Building.
The demonstration, organized by multiple community groups including the John O’Reiley Society, lit candles at the corner of Neil Street and University Avenue. Individuals took turns speaking out against the Trump administration’s immigration policy and against what they saw was an escalation into authoritarianism for roughly an hour before dispersing.
Some attendees distributed chalk, writing messages against ICE and the Trump administration on the sidewalk in front of the city building.
One member of the John O’Reiley Society, who identified himself only as Ruadhán, found out about the shooting in Minneapolis through some friends right after it happened. Ruadhán said the vigil was organized as the news spread through the group’s communication channels on the Signal app.
“It was shared by a lot of intersecting interests,” Ruadhán said. “Palestinian activists were sharing, immigration activists were sharing, all those types converged on the need to understand what was happening.”
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The victim, identified as Renee Nicole Macklin Good, died Wednesday after an ICE officer shot her in her vehicle.
Videos recorded by bystanders posted online show Macklin Good in her vehicle stopped across the middle of the roadway as one ICE officer demands Macklin Good open the door to the vehicle. The vehicle then began to slowly move forward and to the right, and a second ICE officer standing towards the front of the vehicle pulled his weapon and fired three shots inside at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moved forward. The vehicle then sped off before crashing to a stop down the road.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Macklin Good’s actions as an “act of domestic terrorism,” while Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey sharply criticized the federal government’s actions in Minneapolis. Frey called Noem’s version of the incident “garbage” and stated at a press conference following the shooting, “to ICE: get the f–k out of Minneapolis.”
The shooting comes just a day after the federal administration sent 2,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to carry out large-scale immigration crackdowns following allegations of fraud involving the area’s Somali residents.
Democratic Rep. Nikki Budzinski, IL-13, who serves the district covering Champaign-Urbana, issued a statement calling the shooting “horrific.”
“No one is above the law, especially the ICE officers entrusted with upholding it,” Budzinski wrote.
Dylan Blaha, a candidate in the Democratic congressional primary against Budzinski, attended the vigil, speaking to the crowd at one point.
“I feel like this community grows every day, more people feel confident to come out here and protest,” Blaha said to the crowd at the vigil. “Honestly, we know that everyone in power, both Democrats and Republicans, are failing us right now.”
Blaha came to the vigil as an attendee rather than an organizer, stating “I too saw what happened today to Renee, I saw what ICE did, and so I wanted to come out and stand in solidarity with everyone here today.”
The vigil was the second protest organized on short notice this week in C-U, following a demonstration at West Side Park against the U.S. attack on Venezuela and its seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday afternoon.
