What happened?
On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three kids, was shot and killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota during an operation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Good had parked her maroon Honda Pilot diagonally across the road after an ICE vehicle got stuck in the snow, though cars were still able to move around her car. She had just dropped off her six-year-old son at school before the encounter and was a legal bystander, not a suspect for arrest by ICE.
When one of the officers approached the car, Good told him “That’s fine dude. I’m not mad at you.” Good’s wife, Rebecca Good, was standing just outside of the car, filming the officers while she confronted them, saying “That’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning just so you know. It will be the same plate when you come talk to us later.” She then asked the officer “You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go and get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
A different agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, an Iraq war veteran and ten year ICE officer, approached the car and told Good to get out. Good then reversed the car and started to turn to the right to pull away. Ross, who had moved to stand in front of the car, then discharged his weapon. Three shots in total were fired, followed by the Honda Pilot crashing into a parked car on the side of the road.
One of the bystanders at the time came over to the scene and asked to check Good’s pulse, since he said he was a physician, but an officer replied with “I don’t care,” and said that they had “medics on scene.” Emily Heller, a 39-year-old who was making breakfast when the incident occurred, told CNN that the ambulance took 15 minutes to respond to the scene. About two hours after the shooting, a statement was released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirming that Good had passed away.
After Ross shot Good, he was hospitalized for internal bleeding in his torso and was released the same day. DHS secretary Kristi Noem explained to reporters that she believed that Ross had been struck by the car, which was the cause for the bleeding.
“The officer was hit by the vehicle. [Good] hit him. He went to the hospital. A doctor did treat him. He has been released,” Noem said.
U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said in an interview that Ross is now recovering in a safe location, due to the fact that he was receiving threats against his life.
America’s reaction
Good’s death sparked a lot of unrest and anger across the nation, not just in the Minneapolis community. From California to North Carolina, protests have sparked across the country relating to the shooting and the increase in ICE presence. Directly after the shooting, a vigil was held overnight near where Good was shot, and afterwards, many people in the area were afraid to let their kids go to school because of the incident, Clark Hoelscher, Good’s neighbor and a teacher, said when talking to CNN.
“It’s really hard when I have a student who misses school, I’m just scared about what’s happened to them or their family members,” Hoelscher said.
In the St. Louis area, multiple protests have occurred, including one on Jan. 11 in Clayton, where hundreds of people participated in the “ICE Out for Good” rally.
A similar incident involving the police took place only a few blocks from where Good was killed. The murder of George Floyd, which took place on May 25, 2020, raised concerns about police brutality after he was suffocated by officers.
Floyd’s death caused a great deal of unrest regarding racial injustice and violence, and with Good’s death being so close to the site of Floyd’s murder, it has caused even stronger controversy about the issue of police brutality, since it is not an unfamiliar issue to the citizens of Minneapolis.
Government response
The government responded to the incident in a spectrum of different ways. Many government officials say that Good was attempting to run Ross over, and that he was just acting in self defense. President Donald Trump largely sides with Ross, but while talking to New York Times reporters, he commented that he didn’t like what had happened to Good.
“It’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it,” Trump said.
He also acknowledged the fact that he was sure she ran over Ross when she was driving.
“She behaved horribly, and then she ran him over,” Trump said.
Vice President JD Vance also defended Ross, stating that Good’s death was brought upon her by herself.
“I can believe that [Good’s] death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far-left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers,” Vance said.
Additionally, Trump’s administration said that Good committed an act of “domestic terrorism” by trying to run over Ross. Secretary Noem supported this idea during a press conference held the day after the shooting, saying Good was a “domestic terrorist,” and that Good’s car was “used as a weapon.”
The press conference with Noem sparked more controversy due to the mantra “one of ours, all of yours” displayed on the podium. This is a known Nazi saying, referring to when an SS officer was killed in Lidice, a Czech village. In response to this, almost 200 men from the village were shot. A majority of the women were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, while the children were either separated and raised as Germans or murdered at a death camp. It is not confirmed that the phrase on the podium was meant to be connected to the Nazi party in any way, but many speculate that it could be.
Other parts of the government reacted in very different ways. Six federal prosecutors from Minnesota’s U.S. Attorney’s office resigned in protest, similar to four other lawyers from the civil rights division who also resigned. These resignations were due to the decision made by the assistant attorney general for civil rights, who decided to not conduct an investigation of Jonathan Ross for his part in the shooting.
Along with this, hours after the shooting, Minneapolis Mayor James Frey, in a press briefing, voiced his opinions about ICE’s presence.
“There’s little I can say again that will make this situation better. But I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE,” Frey said. “To ICE: get the f— out of Minneapolis.”
What does this mean for St. Louis?
All around the country, ICE has started to become more present and more forceful. In St. Louis, there is an ICE field office in operation, meaning that there are ICE officers present in the St. Louis area, conducting raids and making arrests. Because of the field office, there have also been protests in the area, such as one in Clayton, in an attempt to slow or stop the arrests and raids causing fear in the area.
In Fenton, there have been few to no arrests and raids, though there is no guarantee that there won’t be any in the future. When it comes to Summit, ICE is allowed to enter public areas of a school, such as the lobby and the parking lot, but they need authorization to come into private areas like classrooms. In addition, ICE can also come to neighborhoods and to houses, but unless they have a signed search warrant by a judge, citizens are not legally required to let them in, as stated by the Fourth Amendment.
People all throughout the country are being actively affected by ICE and the future of their operations are yet to be determined, though many of their actions show no signs of stopping.
