The body language on the U.S. House floor this week spoke volumes as Democratic Rep. Angie Craig and Republican Rep. Tom Emmer engaged in a heated argument just hours after an immigration agent killed a motorist and American citizen back home in Minnesota.
Colleagues had to separate them.
For Craig, it was about standing up to a top-ranking Republican about ICE tactics, lax congressional pushback and a tragedy that left 37-year-old Renee Macklin Good dead in Minneapolis.
“I simply told him on the House floor that this political stunt by this administration got a woman killed in Minneapolis today,” Craig said in an interview after the exchange.
To Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor who along with Craig is a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, the House floor exchange glossed over a past vote by Craig to make immigration enforcement more permissive. Flanagan’s campaign said Craig “cravenly picked a fight” with Emmer.
“Congresswoman Craig was voting to praise ICE in June while she was running for the U.S. Senate, that seems pretty clear to me where she stands,” Flanagan told MPR News.
The broader takeaway is that immigration is shaping up as a key issue in the race for Minnesota’s open U.S. Senate seat. With Craig and Flanagan overlapping on several other issue stances, their divide on this one could get elevated as both head toward an August nominating primary.
The shooting at the scene of an immigration action in a residential neighborhood ignited protests over the ICE presence in Minneapolis. Nationally, it kicked off a debate about enhanced immigration operations by ICE and how officers interact with observers.
Since the fatal shooting, both Democratic candidates have called for ICE to leave Minnesota. Republicans in the race — to fill the seat that Sen. Tina Smith will give up next year — are in sync with the Trump administration and other party leaders in support of the immigration crackdown.
Craig, Flanagan tee off on immigration issue
Flanagan said she’s the only one in the race who has been firmly opposed to all aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration push.
“This is actually one of the clearest points of contrast between me and my primary opponent, Angie Craig,” Flanagan said Thursday.
She pointed to Craig’s vote in January 2025 in support of the Laken Riley Act, a Trump-pushed law that requires the detention without bail of people in the country without authorization charged with burglary, assaulting a police officer or other crimes. Flanagan also brought up a House resolution condemning antisemitism and expressing gratitude for ICE and other law enforcement, which Craig supported.
“I think that Minnesotans have a really clear choice,” Flanagan said. “Do you want someone who votes along with Donald Trump and the agents who are terrorizing our communities? Or do you want someone who you know believes that we can have secure borders, comprehensive immigration reform, a pathway to citizenship, and have a policy that is grounded in dignity, the safety of our entire community?”
A year later, Craig said the vote on the bill regarding detention of immigrants requires due process for those charged or arrested to remove them from the country. Claims to the contrary were “disingenuous,” she said. Beyond that, Craig criticized the Trump administration as acting outside the bounds of law in its recent immigration enforcement actions.
She said Flanagan and her campaign are off base with their criticism of her.
“If you’re going to complain about something, you should at least tell the truth about what it is at the end of the day,” Craig said. “Minnesotans believe that we have to protect our borders, and most Minnesotans agree that individuals who are undocumented who commit crimes, including violent ones, should be detained. It still requires due process.”
Craig agreed that immigration enforcement and ICE’s presence in Minnesota would be central to the Senate DFL race. And she said she will be “on the front lines of this fight.”
The public fight with Emmer
That brings it full circle to her confrontation with Emmer, captured by House TV cameras and for which no sound is available.
She said Emmer’s social media posts from earlier in the week angered her.
“I pray that every federal law enforcement officer on the ground in Minnesota right now remains safe as they carry out their vital mission,” Emmer, the House Majority Whip, wrote on X. “Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are cowards who are inciting violence to distract from their own failures. It's dangerous. Stay safe, @ICEgov.”
Craig said such rhetoric is fanning tensions in Minnesota and other places.
“He deserves to be challenged for that. We have a number of Republicans across this country who refuse to stand up to this administration, refuse to call for the rule of law,” Craig said, “and you know, I'm not going to let Tom Emmer or anybody else get away with it.”
The encounter lasted minutes with finger pointing between both lawmakers. The Minnesota congressional delegation’s longest-serving member, Rep. Betty McCollum, was among colleagues who eventually stepped in to break up the scuffle.
Emmer didn’t respond to a request for comment about the clash with Craig, the ICE shooting and the state and federal responses that followed.
Craig, meanwhile, has stepped up her criticism of Flanagan on another front: fraud.
“If I were a lieutenant governor of a state right now, particularly this one, my No. 1 priority would be helping the governor address the fraud issues that we have in the state,” Craig said. ”I don’t believe we can afford for her to be the nominee and put the Senate seat at risk the way she is abdicating all responsibility and accountability for fraud in Minnesota, and pushing Governor Walz in front of that bus by himself, as she has been his partner for seven years, is kind of disgusting.”
The Flanagan campaign said the immigration enforcement and Good’s killing would remain top of mind for Minnesota voters through November.
“The only person refusing to take accountability and jeopardizing this seat is Angie Craig,” her campaign spokesperson, Lexi Byler, said.
Republicans back ICE officers
Republicans have also seized on the fraud issue and are expected to make it a campaign centerpiece. When it comes to immigration, they’re supportive of the surge of immigration agents in Minnesota.
And they stood with the ICE officer who shot Good.
David Hann, a former state senator and chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, said observers and protesters need to stay out of the way of ICE and other officers as they conduct operations. He also faulted Democrats locally for "demonizing" the federal government and law enforcement.
“You can't keep encouraging people to defy the law and not see bad things happen,” Hann said. “I think that good leadership, if they were good leaders, would be telling people to stay home, to not interfere with law enforcement.”
Tom Weiler, a retired Navy submariner and GOP candidate for Senate, said the shooting was an “absolutely a tragic loss of life.”
“It was clear this was eventually going to happen, and the vacuum of leadership in Minneapolis and Minnesota inflamed the situation and another needless tragedy in Minnesota,” Weiler wrote on X.
Retired Navy Seal Adam Schwarze posted, “ICE belongs in Minneapolis and anywhere the law needs to be enforced. We cannot allow the lawless Left to reopen our borders and let criminals run rampant in our streets.”
