Protests have erupted across the United States following Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’ cold-blooded killing of 37-year-old woman Renee Good on January 7 in Minneapolis.
The fury of demonstrators — marching in their hundreds, or thousands, in dozens of cities — was inflamed by the immediate statements from government officials claiming the shooting was “justified self-defence” provoked by an “act of domestic terrorism”.
As other cars drove unimpeded around her vehicle, two ICE agents approached Good’s SUV. She had just dropped her six-year-old son at school. She lowered her window but kept her hands on the steering wheel. Her partner, Becca Good, got out to film the incident on her phone.
Ross approached the SUV, he took out his gun and fired three shots, striking Good in the face and killing her. Following the shots, the SUV careened down the street, hitting several parked cars.
Ross — who has worked for ICE for 10 years — walked away, gesturing to others to call 911. A medical doctor who identified himself to the agents was prevented from assisting. ICE agents remained on the scene until emergency medical services arrived, but paramedics were blocked by ICE vehicles and forced to walk in to reach Good’s body.
These events were captured by bystanders and corroborated by eyewitness accounts reported in local and national media. One eyewitness said she had received a mobile phone alert that ICE agents were operating in the neighbourhood. That prompted observers — including Renee and Becca — to arrive.
The Trump administration appears determined to prevent such observers from being present, as they shine a spotlight on ICE’s operations.
The federal government has deployed about 2000 masked and armed ICE agents to Minneapolis since December — its biggest operation to date — particularly targeting Somali migrants.
Smears
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem labelled Good a “domestic terrorist”. Vice President JD Vance said her death was “a tragedy of her own making”. President Donald Trump falsely claimed Good used her SUV to “run over” Ross and that he had been hospitalised.
At a press conference on January 7, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey rejected the administration’s claims that the shooting was an act of self-defence and demanded that ICE “get the fuck out of Minneapolis”.
Instead, Noem announced the deployment of hundreds more agents. The Trump administration has blocked state and local authorities from working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on a joint investigation. The FBI has seized the evidence.
Millions of people who have watched the videos can see for themselves that it was a deliberate killing. Mass vigils and protests began the night of January 7 in Minneapolis, and over the following week more than a thousand rallies, vigils and demonstrations took place nationwide.
Subsequent reporting has revealed that Ross is an outspoken white supremacist and Trump supporter.
Murder with impunity
Some of the larger protests had initially been called in response to the January 3 US military operation in Venezuela, which kidnapped Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly member Cilia Flores, who is married to Maduro. The attack killed at least 80 Venezuelans and Cubans.
The US military has also killed at least 115 people that were travelling by boat in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, on the pretext — without evidence — that they were drug traffickers.
A government willing to murder people abroad will also murder people at home. That is the lesson of Trump’s actions in Venezuela and US cities, where ICE operations have already killed at least nine people.
On the day Good was murdered, Trump gave an extensive interview to the New York Times. He maintained that Venezuelan oil “belongs to the United States” and threatened Colombia, Cuba and Mexico with similar interventions.
He said that “owning” Greenland was a necessity for US security and to prevent China and Russia from doing so.
Trump’s aggressive and racist domestic policies — like his foreign ones — are based on militarism. The use of masked ICE and Border Patrol agents —unaccountable to local or state authorities —mirrors illegal military operations overseas.
More demonstrations against state violence have been called, particularly around the Martin Luther King holiday. At the same time, thousands of people are acting as neighbourhood observers, as Good did: watching streets, ensuring children get to school safely and delivering groceries to families too afraid to shop for themselves.
The movement to defend each other’s neighbours echoes the Underground Railroad — the secret network of safe houses and routes to help escaped slaves — before the US Civil War.
Observers are smeared as “terrorists” by the government, along with those attending vigils and protests. However, they see, and expose, the violence of the state.