I was an ICE agent – Trump’s immigration policy is totally crazy ...Middle East

In a career lasting well over two decades, “Peter” only ever drew his gun once while on duty with US immigration services – when someone he needed to detain suddenly drove a car towards him.

“He looked me in the eyes, I looked him in the eyes,” recalls the veteran. “I was ready to shoot him.”

Thankfully for both men, the driver had second thoughts. He halted before it was too late.

But watching disturbing videos of Renee Good being killed in her car this month by Jonathan Ross, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), brought back sharp memories for Peter, who asked for his real name not to be shared.

“Something you assume is routine can turn into use of deadly force in a split second.”

Good’s tragic and highly controversial death in Minneapolis left Peter feeling desperate about his country’s polarised politics – wondering where society is heading – as intense, urgent and often angry debates continue about the powers and conduct of ICE.

Images showing armed officers with masks over their faces heavy-handedly arresting people on US streets, under Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, have provoked widespread outrage among many Americans in recent months.

A video emerged last week of a disabled woman being hauled from her car by ICE agents in flak jackets with their faces hidden. There are reports of US citizens and permanent legal residents being targeted simply because they are from ethnic minorities.

Even the podcaster Joe Rogan, a prominent Trump supporter, has compared ICE to the Gestapo.

Trump’s team argue the President was given a clear mandate by voters to remove an estimated 12 million unauthorised immigrants from the US, who they warn may have unknown criminal records. They say that ICE operations are being continually disrupted by abusive activists. Trump even stated that Good was a “domestic terrorist”.

Demonstrations are leading to more flashpoints, with one protester outside an immigration facility in California blinded in one eye after being shot with a paintball by officers last week.

Peter despairs. “You got all these people who say: ‘This is my country, get rid of these foreigners.’ And then you got these other people saying: ‘We’re all immigrants.’ Nobody’s trying to get into the middle,” he says. “You’ll never see this problem solved, never. It’s only getting worse.”

The veteran, who served during the presidencies of Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton, is an immigrant himself. His parents obtained visas to move to the US from eastern Europe when he was a child.

“This is a country of immigrants,” he says. “I know what these people go through.” He supports any person who “comes here legally and works and becomes an American… That is what America is all about.” But he thinks it’s right to protect the country’s border.

He remains in contact with many serving ICE officers. His perspective on what unfolded in Minnesota’s largest city on 7 January, and why, provides an insight into how agents are thinking and feeling right now.

He is disturbed at how ICE has been operating under Trump’s “totally crazy” approach. “Trump is just like: let the animals loose, go get everybody.”

Good was clearly also concerned by their actions. She is thought to have been volunteering as a legal monitor of ICE when the confrontation occurred, trying to ensure that detainees are treated fairly.

But Peter worries that tense interventions by bystanders also risk making situations more dangerous, in a country where nearly a third of adults say they own a gun. People are “harassing those guys all day,” he says, adding that most officers are just trying to do their jobs.

He had predicted to a friend that “sooner or later, someone’s going to get hurt or killed,” following the surge in anti-immigrant operations under Trump. “Next,” he fears, “it’s going to be an ICE agent who is going to get shot and killed.”

So what did the former officer make of the seconds leading up to Good being shot?

Analysing Good’s shooting second by second 

From the very start, Peter says the incident should have been handled differently.

If he had wanted to question or detain Good, he would have “boxed her in, so there was no way for her to get out,” by driving his vehicle in front of hers. Officers could then “have her vehicle towed. That’ll solve the whole problem.”

With a mask pulled over his nose and mouth, Ross walked around the car, filming it on his phone despite wearing a body-mounted camera. Smiling at the agent, Good told him: “I’m not mad at you.”

Peter argues that Good’s wife, Rebecca, was “intimidating” Ross by mocking him while filming herself – though opponents of ICE contend that she remained calm throughout, without making any threats to the armed officer.

Ross walked in front of Good’s vehicle while a masked colleague strode forward shouting: “Get out of the f****** car.” This agent pulled the driver’s door handle several times – prompting Good to reverse a few feet, perhaps in fear – before he reached inside the open window.

There was no need for this escalation when Good wasn’t posing an obvious threat, Peter says. “I wouldn’t have done it… You have her registration number, so what’s the rush?”

However, when Good begins driving forward in the footage, in Peter’s mind the situation becomes much more difficult.

From some camera angles, it seems clear that she was trying to turn and escape. But in that moment, Ross is “not looking to see which way the wheels are turning, he’s looking at her,” says the veteran. When the car moved towards him, he believes Ross may have genuinely feared for his life.

He drew his gun and fired a shot through the windscreen. Ross was able to dodge the car as it turned but fired twice more. He walked away from the confrontation, though government officials have claimed there was sufficient impact for him to suffer internal bleeding.

“I probably might not have shot, I probably would have tried to push myself away from the vehicle,” says Peter.

He says Good’s death was “horrific”. In the heat of the moment, however, he adds: “There’s no doubt in my mind: according to federal regulations, he was justified.” He explains: “You got to understand one thing: that officer’s got a split second to make a decision.

“Everybody wants to do their job and come home at the end of the day. The last thing that officer wanted to do was to shoot her, trust me. But when it’s my life or her life, whose life do you think it’s going to be? It’s tragic, but it just happened.”

Good’s family said in a statement last week: “What happened to Renee is wrong, contrary to established policing practices and procedures, and should never happen in today’s America.” They have called for the shooting to be investigated “transparently”.

The continuing fallout 

For better or worse, Peter’s judgements about what happened are made through the prism of his own experience of danger while trying to arrest someone in a car.

Recalling what happened, he explains: “My partner jumped out of our vehicle. He tried to reach in to take the key out of the ignition, to shut their car off. This individual put the car in reverse, then slammed on the brakes, sending my partner rolling down the street.

“I get out to assist – then he put the car in drive and started heading towards me. That’s when I drew my 40-calibre and I said: ‘If you’re gonna run me over, I’m gonna kill you first.’ He was smart enough to put it in reverse. He jumped out and the car rolled down the street.” The man was later apprehended.

One key difference is that Peter was trying to apprehend a wanted criminal with a record of assaults – very different to Good. But he says there was still no prior expectation that arresting this man would be dangerous.

Ross, who served with the US military in the Iraq War and has worked for ICE for six years, appears to have been through a potentially traumatic incident involving another car in Minnesota just a few months ago.

It has been reported that while reaching into a vehicle to unlock a door, his arm had become trapped when the driver sped off – causing him to be dragged for 12 seconds. Ross required 50 stitches for a “substantial wound” on his arm, besides other injuries. The Guatemalan migrant he was trying to apprehend is awaiting trial.

ICE, a federal agency, was sent into the state of Minnesota by Trump to hunt for undocumented immigrants. “Hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country, and ripping apart that once great state,” the President claimed in November, ignoring that most of the local Somalian community are US citizens.

Peter expects Good’s shooting to be “investigated thoroughly”. Yet the US Justice Department has not opened a case and is unlikely to do so, according to reports. In contrast, the government has pushed for an investigation into Good’s wife, prompting six prosecutors in Minnesota to resign.

John Sandweg, who served as ICE Director for a year under Obama, has said that “each video provided a different perspective that could lend itself to a different conclusion”. However, he told Politico: “Thirty-seven-year-old mothers don’t typically try to kill federal officers”.

Sandweg believes any investigation should go beyond what happened to Good, to also consider: “How can we make sure something like this doesn’t happen again?” He warned that people “are losing faith in ICE as an institution”.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in the 2024 election, said following Good’s death: “We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalised operations are a threat to our public safety.”

The state is now taking court action to stop the deployment, saying this “federal invasion” has caused “chaos and violence”. Trump officials say the action is “baseless”.

Another immigration enforcement veteran contacted by The i Paper says people should bear in mind how tough it can be for agents.

“ICE officers are real human beings too, tasked with enforcing the laws that the US Congress passed years ago, and are under tremendous pressure by the agency to arrest more than they ever have,” he says.

“When Ms. Good drove her vehicle towards that officer, she was not innocent.” He claims this is how “probably 80 per cent of ICE officers see it”.

Meanwhile, he says, Trump’s opponents “are encouraging the public to actively obstruct and interfere with law enforcement operations”, with some making “accusations of Nazism”. Although he accepted that people have a constitutional right to protest, going too far means that “people are going to get hurt”.

Peter agrees on this last point. “If you ever work the streets, if you ever go to strange neighbourhoods, especially now – they don’t like ICE. Trust me, it’s a tough job.”

A third veteran said the atmosphere in the US had become so febrile that he couldn’t speak out in case a relative, who still serves in ICE, suffers retaliation.

One federal officer was allegedly attacked by two Minneapolis residents last week. They hit him with a shovel while he was trying to arrest a Venezuelan migrant, according to US officials – leading to one man being shot in the leg.

Things were very different under Obama, says Peter. Immigration enforcement a decade ago “was a joke, nobody took it seriously”.

Back then, he was mainly picking up people who had already been detained by the police – not proactively hunting for potential targets on the street, like agents are doing now. He thinks things have swung too far the other way, saying: “It’s crazy. It’s the Wild West out there.

“When I worked, I wore a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I never put on those vests, I never put on a jacket to look like I was ready to invade a country. It’s different now.”

Does he worry that some ICE officers are enjoying their powers and their opportunities to intimidate people too much? “They’re a little more aggressive than when I was working, let’s just put it that way.”

He fears what may happen next. “I got friends who are liberals and they hate ICE, and I got friends who are conservative and they say ICE is not doing enough. In this country, it’s either you’re pro or anti, there’s no middle ground. I hate to say it but we’re a divided nation.”

@robhastings.bsky.social

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