Mike DeWine finally had enough.

The social media storm of misinformation stirred by a child care fraud scandal in Minnesota that implicated dozens of Somali immigrants was spreading, and now another Somali community, in Columbus, the capital of Ohio, was being targeted.

So after a statement by his office last week did little to tamp down the false claims, DeWine, the state’s governor, summoned reporters to a news conference this week to scold people who had posted videos fueling speculation of suspicious activity at child care centers in Ohio, which has a sizable Somali population.

President Donald Trump has called Somalis “garbage,” and immigrants from the East African country have been vilified by administration officials, which appears to have encouraged social media campaigns like the ones DeWine was trying to counter.

“We need to look at this as not a Somali problem, we need to look at this as a fraud problem,” said DeWine, whose exasperation recalled his effort to rebut fictitious claims that Trump amplified during the 2024 presidential campaign that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

Litany of facts

At the news conference Monday, DeWine, 79, a Republican in his last year in office, marshaled a litany of facts to try to refute the baseless rumors being pushed by some far-right members of his own party.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) speaks at a press conference at Springfield City Hall alongside Ohio State Highway Patrol Colonel Charles Jones, left, Director of the Department of Public Safety Andy Wilson, second from right, and Springfield City School Superintendent Robert Hill, right, in Springfield, Ohio, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

He noted that the state subsidizes day care for more than 100,000 children and that there are nearly 5,200 child care centers in Ohio. State officials conducted more than 10,000 unannounced checks on child care centers last year, he continued. A phone line for child care fraud yielded 124 tips for investigators last year, he went on. The state closed 38 child care facilities last year for failing to comply with state laws, he said.

But facts can seem like little match for the right-wing, social media-fueled narrative that a vast fraud scheme in Minnesota child care centers, which has led to the indictments of dozens of people of Somali heritage, was part of a nationwide scandal.

That portrayal has been embraced by the White House, which has frozen child care funds in all states until they provide administrative data, and the Ohio statehouse, where lawmakers have called for ramping up inspections, especially in Columbus, which is home to more than 30,000 people of Somali heritage.

DeWine, while acknowledging that there have been instances of fraud, said the system has safeguards that limit misuse of funds. He noted that child care centers receive funding based on attendance, not registration, and that children are logged in and out of centers using a phone app that requires personal identification numbers.

DeWine repeatedly expressed exasperation that false claims about fraud were being amplified by influencers who were trying to enter day care centers and then, when they were refused entry, claiming that there must be nefarious activity inside.

“There’s a good reason why they are not getting into these facilities — to protect these children in these day care centers,” DeWine said.

The governor also pushed back on claims by Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, who said on social media that a Somali community organization being shut down after a state investigation was only “the tip of the iceberg.”

But DeWine said the supposed irregularity cited by Blackwell — that 40 day care centers associated with the Somali organization opened on the same date — was the result of a computer glitch when software was updated.

Day cares respond

Somalis and other immigrants in Columbus faced a surge in enforcement last month, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a series of sweeps in the city. Now, the child care fraud misinformation has created fresh anxiety.

At Little Lions Learning Center in the heart of the Somali community, Kafa Zubi, who runs the facility, said the videos on social media had created a sense of hysteria. “It’s all Islamophobia,” she said of the attention on Somali day care centers. (Most Somalis are Muslim.)

Zubi said centers like hers have to file extensive regulatory documents and are subject to inspections, both announced and unannounced, to maintain federal funding that is a significant part of their budgets.

Abdullahi Saleh, whose parents operate a child care center in Columbus, said they recently had to shoo away strangers who showed up wanting to observe what was happening inside the center. The encounter alarmed parents of the children who attend the center, said Saleh, who asked that his family’s child care center not be named out of fear of retaliation.

“Parents are concerned,” Saleh said. “The conversations are ‘How dare someone with a camera come through a day care center and ask to video my children.’”

‘It’s the story that really sells it’

Jodi Norton Trimble, an official with the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, said over the past week administrators from several child care businesses in central Ohio had contacted her office after receiving threats.

Kurt Gray, a psychology professor at Ohio State University who studies morality in politics, said social media has amplified a familiar device: the vilification of marginalized people.

The actions of a few bad actors, Gray said, are seized upon to turn a class of people who would normally be sympathetic figures, like immigrants or poor people, into villains. He likened the scrutiny of Somali day care centers to that of people on public assistance, noting how President Ronald Reagan popularized the term “welfare queen” to characterize abuses of the welfare system.

“You might think of her as a victim, but now she’s really a villain,” Gray said.

While DeWine came to his news conference armed with numbers and facts, Gray is skeptical that they will resonate with the people the governor is trying to reach, those who believe the accusations in the social media influencers’ videos.

This happened a little over a year ago when DeWine convened another news conference to emphasize that, contrary to Trump’s assertion during a debate, Haitians in his state were not eating pets.

“People don’t think facts are the right things when it comes to moral issues,” he said. “It’s the story that really sells it.”

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Protesters and mourners by more than a thousand gathered in an outdoor vigil and speak-out Wednesday evening for Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman who was fatally shot by federal agents earlier that day as she attempted to drive away from them at 34th Street and Portland Avenue.

Participants filled the streets in the area — some holding held candles or anti-ICE banners, others tying flowers to nearby street poles. They were largely subdued as they listened to speakers and stood solemnly in the twilight.

“Knowing that even white allies can be killed for simply observing, that’s not right,” said freelance photographer Len Sanqui, one of many attendees who gathered near the site of Good’s shooting to pay their respects.

Sanqui, who said her friends had been neighbors with Good, said the past few weeks have been tense ones for her and other immigrant families during a time of stepped up immigration enforcement. “At the same time, I’m seeing a lot of ways that the community is holding each other,” she said.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney, told the swelling crowd along Portland Avenue that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were poorly trained and their operations lacked legitimacy.

“People who clearly have no training coming out here to terrorize our community all because they know the power of our community,” she said. “This isn’t a time to be silent.”

Other speakers invited by Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee and the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice called on the crowd to chant Good’s name and demand accountability from the White House. “This isn’t about where a person is from,” said a speaker. “This is about right versus wrong.”

Volunteers distributed whistles intended to help alert community members when ICE is near and signs that said “ICE OUT.”

The fatal shooting was widely condemned throughout the day by elected officials in St. Paul and Minneapolis, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who demanded that ICE agents leave the city in a speech laced with expletives, even as White House and Department of Homeland Security officials took to social media to cast the killing as heroic self-defense.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in Minnesota to launch what’s believed to be a 30-day surge combining immigration enforcement and fraud investigation, also held a press conference from the Twin Cities at 5 p.m. Wednesday, the same time as the vigil.

The shooting was also condemned by members of the St. Paul and Minneapolis City Councils, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office and individual lawmakers.

“This was as preventable as it is shocking,” said State Auditor Julie Blaha, in a statement. “The major, obvious errors evident in the Trump administration’s characterization of the shooting suggest they have not made even a cursory review of the facts.”

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“I am closely monitoring the situation in Minneapolis,” wrote St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her on her social media accounts on Wednesday afternoon. “My heart is broken for the victim, their family, and our community as a whole. I join Mayor Frey in demanding that ICE leave our cities immediately before they cause any further harm.”

Her added, in a subsequent post: “I urge everyone to please use caution as you express your right to protest this horrific action by federal law enforcement. These agents are unprepared for this job, and you should not put yourself in harm’s way because of their lack of training. Please be safe.”

A motorist fatally shot by an immigration officer in Minneapolis is at least the fifth person to die since the Trump administration launched its aggressive immigration crackdown last year.

The Department of Homeland Security said the woman killed Wednesday was trying to run over officers with a vehicle. But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said video of the incident showed it was reckless and unnecessary.

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Last September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in suburban Chicago shot and killed a Mexican man during a traffic stop.

Two men have died after being struck by vehicles while fleeing immigration authorities — one in California and another in Virginia. In July, a California farmworker fell from a greenhouse roof and broke his neck during an ICE raid.

The fatal shooting of a woman by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday has thrust a long-running and deeply contested question back into the national spotlight: When is a law enforcement officer justified in using lethal force against someone in a moving vehicle?

The killing, captured on cellphone video, has exposed sharp divisions between federal authorities and local officials. It has also renewed scrutiny of use-of-force rules that many police departments adopted decades ago to reduce the risk of bystanders being shot or drivers losing control after being hit by gunfire. While federal officials quickly defended the agent’s actions, local leaders called the shooting unjustified.

At the center of the debate are policies that for years have sharply limited when officers may fire at vehicles, generally barring gunfire at fleeing cars unless the driver poses an imminent threat of deadly force beyond the vehicle itself.

Those restrictions, embraced by many large police departments and reflected in federal guidance, were intended to curb what experts long warned was one of the most dangerous and unpredictable uses of lethal force.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the episode as an “act of domestic terrorism” and said the agent acted in self defense and to protect fellow officers.

Here’s a look at how and why police agencies moved to restrict shootings at moving vehicles, what those policies typically require, how they are enforced, and how recent incidents, including the Minneapolis case, have tested the limits of rules meant to balance officer safety with public risk.

Why many police agencies limit shooting at moving vehicles

For decades, police departments across the U.S. have limited when officers are allowed to fire at moving vehicles, citing the danger to bystanders and the risk that a driver who is shot will lose control.

The New York City Police Department was among the first major agencies to adopt those limits. The department barred officers from firing at or from moving vehicles after a 1972 shooting killed a 10-year-old passenger in a stolen car and sparked protests.

Researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s later found that the policy, along with other use-of-force restrictions, helped reduce bystanders being struck by police gunfire and led to fewer deaths in police shootings.

Over the years, many law enforcement agencies followed New York’s lead. Policing organizations such as the Police Executive Research Forum and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have recommended similar limits, warning that shooting at vehicles creates serious risks from stray gunfire or from a vehicle crashing if the driver is hit.

In Wednesday’s shooting, the vehicle can be seen in videos continuing to move down the street before crashing into two other vehicles and coming to a stop. It was unclear from the video if the vehicle made contact with the officer before he steps to the side.

What federal policy says about shooting at vehicles

Federal law enforcement officers operate under similar guidance.

The Department of Justice says in its Justice Manual that firearms should not be used simply to disable a moving vehicle. The policy allows deadly force only in limited circumstances, such as when someone in the vehicle is threatening another person with deadly force, or when the vehicle itself is being used in a way that poses an imminent risk and no reasonable alternative exists, including moving out of the vehicle’s path.

At a news conference Wednesday evening, Noem said any death is a tragedy, but that the shooting was justified.

“Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation, and took actions to defend himself and defend his fellow law enforcement officers,” Noem said.

She alleged that the woman who was killed was trying to block officers with her vehicle, had been harassing them through the day and “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over” before she was shot. The FBI is leading the investigation into the shooting, she said.

Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said officials should take a step back before making any pronouncements.
“There needs to be two thorough parallel investigations,” he said. “First ICE officials should investigate administratively whether this agent violated policy or training. And then state officials should be conducting a thorough criminal investigation as well.”

He said determining whether the use-of-force was justified or criminal is going to depend on many details that have not been disclosed publicly. But he raised concerns about whether the initiating incident was a traffic-related issue, and whether the federal agents had the authority and training to handle that kind of interaction with the general public.

“Local police are trained to deescalate in those kinds of situations, and I have questions about who this person was, was she known to them, why did one of the officers rush the car and yell. There are still a lot of questions,” Alpert said.

The rise in fatal encounters with federal agents

The shooting of the woman, identified by family members as Renee Nicole Good, 37, occurred as Homeland Security escalates immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota by deploying 2,000 agents and officers. It’s just the latest in a growing number of violent encounters between ICE agents and community members, and at least the fifth fatality.

In October, a Chicago woman was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in a similar incident involving a vehicle. Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old teaching assistant at a Montessori school, survived, and was almost immediately labeled a “domestic terrorist” by Homeland Security officials, who said in media releases that she had “ambushed” and “rammed” agents with her vehicle.

She was charged with assaulting a federal officer, but federal prosecutors were later forced to dismiss the case after security camera video and body camera footage emerged showing a Border Patrol agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck.

What training experts say about moving vehicle policies

The debate over shooting at moving vehicles has been sharpened by high-profile cases, including a 2023 shooting in Ohio in which an officer fired through the windshield of a car in a grocery store parking lot while investigating a shoplifting allegation. The pregnant driver was killed; the officer was later charged and acquitted.

John P. Gross, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law who has written extensively about officers shooting at moving vehicles, said while more departments have added explicit policies regarding use-of-force and moving vehicles, officer training also needs to improve.

“If this woman was blocking the street and a law enforcement operation, they are entitled to arrest her. What they are not entitled to do is to use deadly force to arrest her,” Gross said. “From just watching the video, this seems like an egregious example.”

He said officers need to consider the totality of a situation, the crime or allegation being made against someone, whether they can be found at a later date or whether they are an actual danger.

“From the video, the officer seems to fire as she’s moving past him. At that point, she’s not a threat, so why fire?” he said.