Why is Renee Nicole Good dead — shot and killed by a masked, armed ICE agent on the streets of Minneapolis as she tried to pull away in her car — and why would anyone think it won’t happen here next?
Seriously. It will happen, if not here, then somewhere. And maybe a lot of somewheres. And maybe even to you or someone you know, even if you’re a white U.S. citizen.
It already has happened — last year in Chicago when ICE agents shot and killed a Mexican immigrant in his car. This is not your father’s ICE, which was bad enough. This is Donald Trump’s ICE, which is basically a little-trained, immigrant-chasing paramilitary force, recruited with the words not only to defend your country but to “defend your culture.”
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SUBSCRIBEDoes that defense of the homeland’s culture put you in mind of any historical precedent?
Does this killing of a U.S. citizen, guilty of nothing more than applying her First Amendment rights, put you in mind of any historical precedent?
How about the government-launched violence on the streets of America, but mostly blue America, in states that were guilty of failing to vote for Trump in his three runs for president and are guilty now of attempting legal resistance to his many violations of the Constitution.
We’ve already seen Trump’s many-pronged assault on Colorado, vetoing a bill that would have supplied 50,000 southeastern Coloradans with fresh water. Cutting off federal social-welfare funding in the many millions of dollars to Colorado because Jared Polis refuses — so far — to pardon election grifter Tina Peters. We know the rest.
But guess what other states lost their funding — California, New York, Illinois and Minnesota. Spot a trend there?
Another trend worth noting: According to a New York Times accounting, there have been nine ICE shootings, all the victims apparently in their cars, since September, which seems to be fine with Trump, who keeps ratcheting up the numbers of ICE agents. In Trump’s devastatingly ugly budget bill, ICE will become the most highly funded federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history, and its budget will exceed the budgets of local law enforcement in all 50 states combined.
Trump promised to deport millions upon millions. First it was the violent criminals he said he was after, as if anyone outside MAGA world believed there were millions of violent migrants. Now? In the words of the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal think tank, Trump has created a “deportation-industrial complex.” And so we see it in action.
Good was in her car as ICE agents were apparently going from door to door in the neighborhood looking for, I guess, migrants. She was parked in the middle of the street, apparently observing. In Minneapolis, as in many cities, there are those who warn people when ICE invades a neighborhood. And there are those who document what they see.
As the videos show, two ICE agents approached her car and one told Good to “get out of the fucking car.” And as she attempted to pull away — would you be in fear of armed, masked agents trying to pull your door open? — another agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, shot her dead.
Why?
Because as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “She was a domestic terrorist.” And because as Donald Trump said, she ran over the agent. And as JD Vance said, Good’s death was a “tragedy of her own making.”
These are all lies. They killed Good and then they smeared her, which is standard operating procedure in Trump world. And then to show that they can get away with anything, the FBI said that it would not allow Minnesota officials to work with them or to share with them any of their findings? Trump defended that choice by saying Minnesota officials were “crooked” and “stupid.”
It’s all shocking, but not surprising. The word often used here to describe Good’s death is “inevitable,” given the danger presented by ICE forces.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison supplied another word. He says Good’s death was a warning — to us, to everyone — that it can happen to you.
His quote on ICE’s intentions: “‘You want to defend your neighbors, you’re going to do it at the risk of your own life.’ I think that’s the unmistakable message. Just looking at the tape, they could have said, ‘You get out of here,’ right? And then she gets out of there. They didn’t want her to get out of there. They wanted to either drag her out of that car or do what they did. And it was all about teaching lessons.”
There are many lessons here. One is that Trump sees himself only as president of half the country. The other half being that enemy within he’s always talking about.
Another is that Trump doesn’t believe that rules, or laws for that matter, apply to him. We’ve seen that in Venezuela, first with the likely illegal bombings of alleged drug-running boats and then in the beheading of the Venezuelan government.
In a two-hour sitdown with four New York Times reporters, he explained that international laws and treaties and other obligations don’t apply to him. Yes, he said the quiet part out loud.
When asked about limitations on his powers, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that Trump’s morality is unlikely to ever be my personal guiding inspiration. And I don’t even have a foreign policy.
I don’t know much about Renee Good, but what I do know seems to suggest some level of morality. She was a 37-year-old mother of three, who had dropped off her 6-year-old at school before heading to the ICE operation. She is not, as far as we know, a convicted felon. She apparently did once pay off a traffic ticket.
She stood up, in her way, against Trump’s mass deportation of often innocent migrants.
On Friday, the Trump team leaked another video of the shooting, this one from the killer’s own cell phone. They seemed to think that this video, finally, would exonerate him. But what it showed was Good, the victim, making friendly small talk with Ross as he passed by the car,telling him, smilingly, she wasn’t mad at him.
Ross kept walking around the car, soon meeting up with Good’s partner, who teased him about his weight. She was videoing him while he was videoing her? Did that set him off? Or was it that he was once dragged by a car in a similar incident?
Vance said the agent was traumatized. If true, why was Ross still on the streets?
And then we see — but mostly hear — the three gunshots, which sounded all too real and all too traumatizing.
Seconds before the shooting, we see Ross staring directly at Good behind the wheel. The shots, though, weren’t fired from in front of the car. They were fired as Ross moved to the side of the car, which was clearly turning away from him. Did he get grazed by a car moving, at the time, maybe 3 miles an hour? Can’t be sure. They said Ross was taken to the hospital, but he walked, without any issue, to the car taking him there.
Not sure how this video exonerates Ross. It shows us the plain truth of an agent gone rogue. And as the video ends, we hear the last words caught on Ross’ cell phone after he shot Good three times in the face, killing her. Let’s just say they were not words of regret.
“Fucking bitch.”
I know what it sounds like. So do you. But I’m not sure how the words fit into anyone’s idea of morality.
At least not anyone’s this side of the gilded Oval Office.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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