Federal agents arrest a protester on the street amid an operation in Minneapolis on Tuesday. David Guttenfelder - The New York Times.

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS, MITCH SMITH AND HAMED ALEAZIZ | THE NEW YORK TIMES

A federal agent shot and injured an immigrant in Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, federal officials said, an incident that touched off clashes between protesters and law enforcement and that came just one week after an immigration agent killed a woman in the city.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that federal agents were trying to arrest a man from Venezuela who was in the country illegally. She claimed that he fled from agents.

When the officer caught up to him, McLaughlin said he "began to resist and violently assault the officer," and that two people came out of a nearby building and joined in attacking the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.

The officer feared for his life, McLaughlin said, and fired shots, striking the man who agents were seeking in the leg. She said the agent and the man who was shot were in the hospital, and the other two people she accused of attacking the agent were in custody.

The federal government's narrative could not immediately be verified. The conditions of the person who was shot and the agent were not immediately clear.

A social media post from the city said that a reported shooting occurred on the city's north side, and that local officials were working to confirm details. Minneapolis residents have protested repeatedly in the week since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a woman, Renee Nicole Good, on the south side of Minneapolis.

As word of the latest shooting spread, at least 100 protesters gathered near the apparent scene Wednesday night. A group of them yelled at Minneapolis police officers who had blocked the street to traffic, telling the local officers that the federal agents should be arrested.

Several heavily armed Border Patrol agents arrived in a large, military-style vehicle outside the crime scene tape. Protesters swarmed the vehicle and yelled and threw snowballs at agents who had gotten out. The agents eventually retreated, and as they left, they fired at least two canisters of gas that made a loud bang and made it difficult for some to breathe.

A few minutes later, at least two ICE agents arrived in an unmarked SUV and sprayed chemical agents in the faces of protesters who approached them, causing one protester to say that he could not see.

At one point, a protester fired several fireworks toward retreating ICE agents and their cars.

A Minneapolis police officer who identified himself as a supervisor to several protesters told them he did not know exactly what happened. "It's not like they're talking to us," he said, referring to the federal agents on scene.

Some 3,000 federal immigration agents have flooded the Minneapolis area in recent weeks, angering residents and local officials. The Trump administration has defended the deployment as necessary to cracking down on illegal immigration and rooting out fraud.