Five days after an ICE agent fatally shot activist Renee Good, tensions were high in the Minneapolis neighborhood where she died. As federal immigration agents encircled and interrogated a man whose car they had pulled over, residents stepped out of their homes onto the snow-covered sidewalks and street. They yelled profanities, ordered the agents to get out, and recorded the scene on their phones. A FRONTLINE and ProPublica crew was also filming. Christian Molina, the U.S. citizen under questioning, told ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson that federal agents had tailed him and crashed into his car: “They looked at me and decided to pull me over for no reason,” Molina said. Co-published with. The events that followed are captured in footage from the new FRONTLINE and ProPublica documentary “Caught in the Crackdown.” A person hurled a snowball toward the agents, prompting one to lob a tear gas canister into the crowd. “You’re tear-gassing a fucking neighborhood,” a protester shouted. Individuals reside in this place. As the toxic haze billowed up, an agent fired pepper spray at protesters and a news photographer from close range. A different agent shot pepper balls into the crowd, striking Thompson three times. One shot hit him above his right eye.
