On Wednesday, a woman named Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.
There are a lot of things you could say about the shooting. You could say that it’s tragic in the plainest sense of the word: A woman is dead. You could point out that it is extremely unclear why ICE officials were stopping her in the first place, or what legal authority they were exercising at that moment. You could point out how unnecessary the entire incident was, how eyewitness accounts emphasize that Good was not acting in a threatening manner, and that she attempted to wave the agents past her vehicle (and did wave one vehicle past). And of course, you could emphasize that, even if she had mildly disobeyed an officer, even if she had driven in their general direction at 5 miles per hour, the penalty for that behavior should not be almost immediate execution via gunshot.
But what’s most important to say is how utterly predictable Good’s death was. This was not an unforeseeable tragedy or a freak accident. It was the inevitable outcome of an immigration enforcement apparatus that has been poorly trained, sheltered from consequences, and empowered to behave recklessly.
Reporting shows that ICE is filled with substandard agents. Its aggressive push to hire more agents uses charged rhetoric that appeals to far-right groups, but the agency has run into problems with recruits unable to pass background checks or meet minimum standards for academic background, personal fitness, or drug usage. One career ICE agent called new recruits “pathetic,” according to The Atlantic, and a current Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that “There is absolutely concern that some people are slipping through the cracks,” and being inadvertently hired.
At the same time, ICE and its partner agencies like Customs and Border Patrol have been put in charge of a massive immigration crackdown of unprecedented scope. To carry out that mission, they’ve been empowered to act with near total impunity. They routinely violate the rights of observers, protesters, and citizens. They often operate masked and without proper identification, deliberately obscuring who they are and whom they answer to. Combine a massive new mission with anonymity and poor training, and you have a recipe for violence.
For the past year, ICE has been involved in a series of escalating incidents that rarely result in repercussions for anyone involved. ICE agents have recklessly caused traffic accidents and then, in one incident, arrested the person whose car they hit. They’ve tear-gassed a veteran, arrested him, and denied him access to medical care and an attorney. They have attacked protesters merely for filming them in public. They’ve pepper-sprayed a fleeing onlooker in the eyes from a foot away. They’ve pointed guns at a 6-year-old. They’ve knelt on top of a pregnant woman while they arrested her. They have arrested another pregnant woman, then kept her separated from her newborn while she languished in custody. They have repeatedly arrested American citizens, and they’ve even reportedly deported a citizen, directly contradicting court orders.
As these violent acts keep occurring, the response from the Trump administration is to propagandize and lie as flagrantly as it can. J.D. Vance, offering absolutely nothing whatsoever to back up his words, has called Renee Good a deranged leftist. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim Wednesday that Good was a “domestic terrorist” was said without a shred of evidence. But it’s part of a pattern. The administration and its agencies claimed they are not arresting citizens when they are. They claimed an Iraq veteran assaulted officers when video shows he plainly did not (and no charges were filed). They denied pepper-spraying an infant, when they did. And far from trying to cool tensions or prevent further violent incidents, the administration routinely employs bombastic language on social media, in an attempt to normalize brutality, violence, and lawlessness as standard operating procedure.
Given that we’ve just passed the anniversary of January 6, I can’t help but draw a contrast between how Capitol Police performed on that day and how ICE operates. More than 100 Capitol Police officers were injured on January 6. Fifteen of them were hospitalized. But even with that number of officer injuries, only a single rioter was shot—and only as a last resort, when a mob was about to break down a door behind which members of Congress were sheltering. The Capitol Police showed incredible restraint in genuinely dangerous circumstances.
Contrast that with the recklessness of ICE, which routinely escalates to violence at the first opportunity—and which shot a woman on Wednesday because her car maybe, potentially could have possibly grazed an officer at sub-golf cart speed. The agent who killed Good has been reported as a veteran officer, which makes the entire incident even more baffling and unnecessary. The unstated expectation is that a panicked civilian should act with perfect poise and calm while armed men rush at her—and give contradictory commands, according to an eyewitness—and if she steps out of line for even a second she might be killed. On the flip side, a mere moment of feeling vaguely threatened is enough excuse for an experienced federal agent to unload his gun into a civilian’s head. It’s an incredible double standard and a reversal of how we should expect more from officers than from civilians.
This is going to keep happening. And we know it’s going to keep happening because this isn’t even the first time federal agents shot a woman in her car and lied about it. Please don’t forget the case of Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot multiple times by CBP agents in Chicago in October. She was accused of ramming an agency vehicle with her car and initially charged with assaulting an officer. That same officer bragged in text messages about shooting her, saying “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.” Martinez’s attorney provided video in court showing that CBP agents had rammed her car, not the other way around, and officials later dropped all charges against her. Martinez is still alive. But that’s due to sheer luck, not any kind of restraint on the part of federal agents.
This is what comes of an administration that circles the wagons rather than taking accountability every time a violent incident occurs. This happened before with Marimar Martinez. It happened again Wednesday. And it’s going to keep happening. Renee Good didn’t have to die. But unless there is a culture shift away from reckless violence and toward accountability and transparency, she will not be the last person federal immigration agents kill.
