Trump Calls Renee Good Killing a ‘Tragedy’ and Says ICE Agents Will Make Mistakes

The change in tone was stark for the president, who said he had been told that Ms. Good’s father was a strong Trump supporter.

President Trump on Tuesday said the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis was a “tragedy” about which he “felt terribly,” adding that the immigration agents he has deployed sometimes are “going to make a mistake.”

The change in tone was stark for the president, who said he had been told that Ms. Good’s father was a strong Trump supporter.

Just hours after she was killed on Jan. 7, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer” and said that she had “behaved horribly.” He later said Ms. Good, a poet and a mother of three, had a “highly disrespectful” attitude toward law enforcement and suggested that it justified her killing. Trump administration officials, including Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, were quick to accuse Ms. Good of being a “domestic terrorist.”

But at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump dropped that hard-line stance as he delivered a meandering reflection on his first year back in office.

“You know, when the woman was shot, I felt terribly about it,” he said, referring to Ms. Good. “And I understand both sides of it.” He called the shooting “a horrible thing.”

“You know they’re going to make mistakes,” Mr. Trump said. “Sometimes ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or, you know — they deal with rough people. They’re going to make a mistake. Sometimes it can happen terribly.”

Mr. Trump appeared to link his apparent change of heart to what he said were the political views of Ms. Good’s parents, particularly her father, who he said was a “tremendous Trump fan.”

“A lot of people said, ‘Oh, he loves you,’” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Good’s father. His voice trailed off. “I hope — I hope he still feels that way.”

Ms. Good’s killing has galvanized protesters across the country, but nowhere more so than in Minneapolis, where defiant residents who oppose ICE operations have faced off with federal agents night after night.

Mr. Trump’s new posture on Tuesday did not appear to extend to those demonstrators, whom he accused of being “paid agitators and insurrectionists.” He singled out a woman who was present when Ms. Good was shot and had screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at the ICE agents. Mr. Trump called the woman a “professional” agitator.

As he flipped through pages of notes and rattled off various domestic policy changes he had made, Mr. Trump returned repeatedly to his immigration crackdown in Minnesota. He opened the news conference by displaying photos of undocumented immigrants captured by ICE who he said were criminals.

Mr. Trump said the federal agents in Minnesota and across the country were seeking to remove only immigrants with violent records.

In practice, the rate of deportations of people with no criminal record has gone up more than six times over the past year, an analysis by The New York Times found. And during high-profile ICE crackdowns in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, more than half of those arrested had no criminal record.

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