ICE Shot and Killed Renee Good

On the afternoon of January 7th, 2026, I opened my phone to footage of a woman being shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Within hours of it happening, Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security were shaping the narrative that the woman was using her car to run over an agent. The president echoed that claim, calling her a “professional agitator” and insisting the agent was acting in self-defense. The video that I watched told a completely different story. I saw a woman sitting stationary in her car as two ICE agents rushed toward her screaming. One violently pulled on the door handle, and when she attempted to drive away out of fear, another agent raised his gun and fired multiple shots at her. What I watched happen was very different from the story I was told. It was reported that this was self-defense, but what I watched was an execution. 

The victim was 37-year-old Renee Good, a mother and a wife whose life was cut short in seconds. Her wife was sitting in the car with her when the shots were fired and was forced to witness her partner’s killing from only inches away. Good was an American citizen. That fact shouldn’t matter because no one should be killed by ICE on U.S. soil regardless of their immigration status. She was not a threat or a foreign enemy. She was a citizen, a partner, a mother, and she was killed by the very agency sworn to protect her. The finality of her death left no room for remedy, no opportunity to explain herself, or to survive the encounter. In that instant, a life full of relationships, responsibilities, and love was erased.

The past year ICE has faced a lot of criticism for exactly these kinds of abuses. At a time when the U.S. government struggles to pay teachers and firefighters, the agency continues to receive massive salaries, sign-on bonuses, and funding for militarized operations. Beyond funding, many agents are given little to no prior training before being sent into the field. This lack of preparation only increases the risks for civilians as untrained agents are more likely to use excessive force in tense situations. Unmarked vans, clothing, and face coverings that hide their identities allow them to approach people in public spaces without warning. These are the tactics they use to snatch individuals off the street and detain them without due process and now those same methods have escalated to outright extrajudicial killings while the government defends it. 

Now more than ever, it is obvious that ICE’s mission to “defend the homeland” was nothing more than a pretense for the unchecked exercise of authority. Good is the most recent victim in a cycle of abuse by ICE and the administration. Mahmoud Kalil, a lawful permanent resident with a green card, was arrested by the agency last March. His detention, which lasted for months, was in part due to his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University, despite his legal right to live and work in the United States. That same month, Kilmar Ábrego García would be forcibly deported to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order due to credible fear of persecution by gangs if he were to return home. García would be ripped away from his family by ICE and sent to a country where his life was at serious risk. These incidents are part of an unmistakeable pattern that cannot be ignored: ICE does not exist to protect Americans or uphold the law. Its power is constantly used to intimidate or punish and even if you are a legal resident, you can fall victim to unchecked authority.

What may be even more disturbing than the violence itself is how the American government, particularly under the Trump administration, responds to these incidents. Instead of taking accountability, officials are quick to craft a story that justifies the killing of an unarmed civilian. The president deemed Good “disorderly, obstructing, and resisting” before insisting that incidents like this are happening “because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers.” The goal is not to take responsibility, but to shift the blame away from state violence and onto the victim. That same strategy can be seen in right-wing media when figures like Jesse Watters dismissed Good’s death by mocking her identity. Live on Fox News, Watters would scornfully point out that Good was a “self-proclaimed poet” who had “pronouns in her bio” as if those details make her slaughter any less serious. At the federal level, Kristi Noem and DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin escalated the rhetoric characterizing her actions as “domestic terrorism.” This word was once used to describe acts of mass violence, now being used to legitimize lethal force against a woman sitting in her car.

The real power of the government during situations like these is in guiding the narrative. The word “terrorist” has lost all meaning when used by U.S. politicians as it has become a flexible label applied to anyone the state wants the public to stop empathizing with. By branding Good a threat to law enforcement, the focus is shifted from the crime committed to the character of the victim. A story is built in which the state is defending itself and the woman in her car becomes the danger. Even with clear video evidence, many will still internalize this version of events. Facts become secondary to the story the government tells, and once that narrative takes hold, it can be used to justify any action, no matter how unjust.

Even with a small amount of research, it becomes clear that Renee Good posed no threat to the ICE agents. Eyewitness accounts consistently describe her as acting in a nonthreatening manner toward the aggressive agents. The police chief of Minneapolis confirmed in an interview that only a woman was injured when he was made aware of the incident. This directly contradicted Trump’s claim that he was recovering in the hospital. This is even before considering the video footage, which shows in stark detail the execution-style nature of the shooting. Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, many continue to distrust their eyes simply because they are told to. Falsehoods used to require a lack of access to information, but now, even with the evidence available for everyone to see, politicians can dictate what people are willing to accept as truth.

Renee Good was murdered in cold blood by an ICE agent, and in order to justify it, the federal government quickly set its sights on her character by smearing her as a domestic terrorist. This is not a tragic anomaly or a one-off failure, but a system operating as designed. One that preserves its authority by erasing the humanity of the people it harms. On January 7th, a child lost a mother, and a wife lost her partner, and no amount of rhetoric can undo the life that was lost. We are witnessing in real time the government turn its power inward against the people it supposedly serves, and somewhere a man with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag in his room is cheering. Unless something changes, your politics, your beliefs, and your loyalties will not protect you, because a government that can justify killing Renee Good can justify killing you. 

Photo Credit: Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost/CatchLight Local/Report for America