On a cold January morning in Minneapolis, American citizen Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, wife, poet, and neighbor, was gunned down by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent during what the federal government called an “immigration enforcement operation.” The killing of Good, whose life ended at the hands of an agent wielding a weapon rather than a strategy for de-escalation, marks one of the most horrifying abuses of law enforcement power in recent memory. It raises urgent questions about ICE’s use of force and what happens when those sworn to protect us view civilians as threats.
Good’s death was not an accident, and there is no longer even an attempt from officials to pretend like it was. It was the predictable consequence of an agency empowered to treat civilians like combatants and shielded by a political apparatus that refuses to enforce accountability or proportionality.
A Life Taken, A Family Shattered
Renee Nicole Good is already being forgotten as just another martyr, another number on the list of victims of this murderous system. People are not remembering that she was a devoted parent who had just dropped her 6-year-old child off at school that morning. She lived among friends and neighbors in Minneapolis, where she was known as a compassionate, warm presence. Her wife, Becca Good, released a statement describing Renee Good and how “kindness radiated out of her,” someone who believed in the basic dignity of others.
“Renee was made of sunshine,” Becca Good later said, struggling to describe a life cut short. She watched her partner be shot in front of her, in broad daylight, for little reason except for one undeniable truth: an ICE agent made the conscious choice to pull the trigger three times because he felt empowered to do so.
Good leaves behind three children, including that 6-year-old, whose early morning routine of school drop-off became the prelude to an unimaginable loss. Her killing was a trauma that will ripple through her family and community for years.
What Happened and What We Know
According to multiple videos and eyewitness accounts, ICE agents approached Good’s vehicle on a residential street around 9:37 am on Jan. 7. A cellphone video taken by the ICE agent who shot her, Jonathan Ross, shows the confrontation from his perspective: Good remained inside her SUV, her wife standing right next to the vehicle with just her phone, exchanging words with masked federal officers. Just moments before the shooting, Good can be heard saying calmly, “I’m not mad at you.”
The two were not armed with any weapons and were not attempting to harm anyone. They were “armed” only with their voices and whistles. Conflicting orders from agents — some telling her to move, others to exit the vehicle — created chaos in real time. The SUV began to pull away slowly. Within seconds, Agent Ross raised his firearm and fired three rounds through the driver’s window, striking Good in the head.
As can be seen in Ross’s recording, moments after his murder of Good, a male voice can be heard muttering the words, “f—ing b–ch” in reference to Good. The vehicle then continued a short distance before crashing into another vehicle and a light pole.
There was no high-speed chase, no armed standoff. And yet, federal authorities defended it as an act of self-defense. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed Good “weaponize[d] her vehicle,” but the footage tells a very different story: one of a woman trying to de-escalate or retreat in the face of overwhelming force. In fact, it could be said that ICE directly turned the vehicle into a weapon by killing the driver with her foot still on the gas.
The Politics of ‘Danger’ and the Myth of Threat
The Trump administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, rushed to frame the incident as a justified act of self-defense, arguing that the agent’s life had been threatened. But experts in law enforcement tactics, such as Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez, have been quick to challenge that narrative. Chavez himself described the shooting as “a clear violation of force.” Under Department of Homeland Security policy, firing at a moving vehicle is only permitted when there is a clear threat of deadly harm, and that threshold was not met here.
Instead, what we see in the footage is a woman being shot point-blank while attempting to comply with orders under duress, surrounded by federal agents in an operation that itself was deeply controversial. Minneapolis was the site of what ICE called its “largest immigration enforcement operation ever,” a deployment of some 2,000 agents for an alleged welfare fraud investigation that had already strained community trust.
This is not an isolated incident. Renee’s killing was reportedly the sixteenth time ICE agents opened fire on people since Trump’s crackdown began last year, and one of several deaths linked to federal immigration enforcement in recent months.
Voices That Demand Justice
Local leaders have not minced words. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey condemned the shooting and demanded answers. Mayor Frey personally disputed the DHS’s account of the events in a press conference, saying, “Get the f–k out of Minneapolis.” Members of the Minneapolis City Council called for the agent who killed Good to be held accountable “to the fullest extent of the law.”
National figures have joined the criticism. Representative Ilhan Omar, appearing on national television, described how “in the videos that have been produced so far that what they are describing is really not what had taken place,” and that “this level of rhetoric is not justifiable to the American people.” Omar also urged the public to document future encounters to ensure transparency and accountability.
And in an unusual outburst from the world of sports, NBA coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, Doc Rivers, publicly denounced the shooting as “straight-up murder,” questioning not just the decision to fire a weapon but the values of an administration that allows such tactics to go unchecked.
Around the country, protests have erupted in every state, from our home here in Philadelphia to the other side of the nation in Portland, calling for the abolition of the murderous system that ICE has built and an end to militarized domestic policing. The outrage goes beyond the horribly tragic deaths like those of Good’s; it is about a system that treats enforcement as war and civilians as collateral.
What This Says About Us
Renee Good’s death should force us to re-examine how we think about public safety and the role of federal enforcement in tandem with our civil rights. A mother shot and killed in broad daylight by an officer supposed to uphold our safety for attempting to leave a crowded scene while her wife watched is not the isolated result of a “bad interaction.” It is the logical outcome of an agency that has continually been granted expansive powers with minimal oversight and an administration under Donald Trump that rewards this aggression.
We must ask ourselves: who protects the protectors? When federal agents operate with impunity, when political leaders rush to defend lethal force before investigations conclude, when communities live in fear of those meant to enforce the law, democracy itself weakens.
Accountability or Acceptance
Renee Nicole Good’s life mattered. Her death demands accountability that goes far beyond internal ICE reviews or defensive press statements.
We need independent investigations, clear limitations on federal use of force through legislative reforms that ensure agencies like ICE cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner. We must also recognize the human toll for every community that now dreads federal intervention.
Renee did not deserve to be killed. If her death can be brushed aside as enforcement, then enforcement has become a mere excuse for execution.