Former ICE Director Knocks Kristi Noem's 'Incredibly Irresponsible' Shooting Statement

The former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took issue with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s remarks about an ICE agent who shot and killed a woman in Minnesota on Wednesday.

Noem told reporters that the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, 37, in Minneapolis was in response to “an act of domestic terrorism.” In later remarks to the press, Noem claimed that people were being trained to use their vehicles for coordinated attacks on ICE agents.

“I find that to be an incredibly irresponsible statement,” John Sandweg said in an appearance on CNN.

Sandweg, who served as ICE acting director from 2013-2014 during Barack Obama’s presidency, expressed concerns to CNN that the Department of Homeland Security’s rush to hire immigration agents under Donald Trump — as well as its “shortcutting” of training — may have informed the shooting.

However, he stressed that initial information on such incidents “is almost always wrong,” and it’s difficult to know exactly how things went down, which is why investigations are launched.

“There is no way that you can make those conclusions that this was an act of domestic terrorism, that this woman was targeting ICE agents. There’s no way that you can make those judgments at this time, given the absolute dearth of information that’s available, even to the secretary of DHS,” he said.

Sandweg added that Noem was doing a “disservice” to Good and her family as well as to ICE.

“This undermines the credibility of the agency when you rush out and reflexively say, ‘We know what happened. We were right. They were wrong,’” he said. “This is politicizing this. Not everything is political.”