This post was originally published on this site.
Kristi had a problem.
Fifty floors above her, as she saw it, her name was being tarnished. Outside 1 World Trade Center in Manhattan, she had joined a group of protestors who were chanting about a press conference taking place in the building.
“Is Killer Kristi welcome in New York?” the crowd yelled.
“Get out of New York, Kristi!”
From inside the tower, a different Kristi—Kristi Noem, the United States secretary of Homeland Security—was addressing reporters about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday during an operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On Thursday, Noem was announcing that the Department of Homeland Security would be launching “Operation Salvo,” which she described as a takedown of a Dominican gang in New York City. She defended the ICE officer, claiming that Good’s actions (Trump administration officials have claimed Good was seeking to run the officer over) constituted a “domestic act of terrorism.”
“This is an experienced officer who followed his training,” Noem told reporters, “and we will continue to let the investigation unfold” and “follow the procedures and policies that happen in these use-of-force cases.”
Kristi the protestor, who asked to be identified only by her first name—spelled, to her displeasure, the same way as Noem’s—heeded a call from her church after the Minnesota shooting. On Thursday morning, she headed to Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, outside an ICE field office, where Noem’s press conference was initially scheduled. When the location was moved, she joined the throng of a few hundred protestors marching the 15 minutes south to the World Trade Center, where Vanity Fair’s offices overlooked a crowd swelling in opposition to Noem and a heightened security presence accompanying it.
“I’m actually here to pray for her horrible, rotten soul,” Kristi said, “and show my solidarity with Minneapolis.”
As the face of ICE’s operations, Secretary Noem figured prominently into a vivid array of signs on display: along with a drawing of a red MAGA hat refashioned to read, “You’re in a cult,” and calls for “justice for Renee Nicole Good,” a woman was demanding “HAG 4 HAGUE.” The sun was shining on this unseasonably warm winter day outside the building, and a protest monitor from the American Civil Liberties Union kept a steady eye on the large crowd of police officers on hand. As marchers circled the building, passing by the reflecting pools placed on the footprint of the Twin Towers, a masked Port Authority counterterrorism officer stood in the shadow of Santiago Calatrava’s winged Oculus structure, holding a bundle of plastic zip ties hooked to a carabiner.
In an interview with The New York Times in the hours after the shooting on Wednesday, Donald Trump insisted that Good “behaved horribly” and “ran [the ICE officer] over.” But when he reviewed footage from the incident with the paper’s reporters, he sounded less confident. “Well,” Trump said. “I—the way I look at it…”
“It’s a terrible scene,” he said as the video ended. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
At Thursday’s protest, Michaela, who travelled from Long Island and asked to be identified only by her first name, described Wednesday’s shooting as a “tipping point.”
“This is a non-immigrant,” she said. “Not that it matters whether it is an immigrant or not…but I think this just proves that everyone is in danger of ICE.” She had brought a video camera along to document the protest. She connected what she was seeing to her own experience of the Trump administration as a trans woman who was in high school during the president’s first term.
“We thought we were done with it,” she said. “And then just for him to come back, and it’s even worse this time.”
Standing off toward the side of the protest was Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, in dark sunglasses and a long trench coat. A staffer at the organization was leading a round of the most pointed chants regarding Noem.
“This is the day after Renee Nicole Good was murdered by an ICE officer in Minneapolis,” Awawdeh said, “and we’re demanding that her murderer be charged, that ICE cease the chaos that they are creating across cities in this country.” That panic, he said, was “being driven by this agency and this federal administration to deliver on a stupid campaign promise that no one really asked for.”
For all his complaints about urban decay and immigration in liberal cities, Trump has never fully distanced himself from the structures of cultural approval in his native New York—it’s one way to account for his sudden Oval Office embrace of Zohran Mamdani and the mayor’s telegenic, metropolitan charms. Shortly after his stunning election to office in 2016, Trump visited World Trade Center to meet with editors at V.F.’s parent company, Condé Nast.
Before he walked away and lit a cigarette, Awawdeh offered another way of looking at the protest unfolding beside him.
“We’re here today because Secretary Noem has decided to visit New York,” he said, “and we wanted to give her a New York welcome.”