On a residential street in south Minneapolis this morning, federal immigration agents shot and killed a 37‑year‑old U.S. citizen named Renee Nicole Good. She was not the suspect in an ongoing investigation. She was also not a violent criminal. She wasn’t even someone ICE was looking for. Yet, she was executed in broad daylight by an agent in tactical gear.
Do you realize how insane that sounds?
A federal agent shot a U.S. citizen who posed no imminent threat and wasn’t the subject of any arrest or enforcement action. This is state‑sanctioned violence. And it wasn’t only an attack on Renee. It was a signal to every woman in America that even nonviolent presence, witnessing, or observing authority can be treated as a threat to justify lethal force.
As public health researchers, as community advocates, as neighbors, we know that arming up law enforcement doesn’t make communities safer. It never has and it never will. Gun violence in the United States is a public health epidemic. Every community program focused on gun safety exists because we understand that the proliferation of firearms and lethal force predictably leads to more death. And yet, the federal government continues to double down on deploying armed agents with minimal training and experience into our neighborhoods without accountability, transparency, or meaningful oversight.
Worse, the administration defaults blame to the victims. Following the shooting, Kristi Noem gave a press conference presenting boldfaced lies to the American public. She claimed ICE agents had been attempting to get vehicles out of snow – video shows clear roads. She claimed Renee Good was a leftist terrorist, despite confirmation of whether or not she was even a protester still pending. She claimed that Renee had attempted to run down ICE agents, when video shows her clearly backing her car to face away from agents, before turning away from them entirely – at which point she was shot. Kristi goes on to speculate whether such acts of “domestic terrorism” are being deliberately taught to anti-ICE protesters, once again escalating the same rhetoric the administration has been repeating for months: the left are radical, violent, domestic terrorists. All evidence is to the contrary, of course. But facts don’t care about MAGA feelings.
Renee Good was not committing “domestic terrorism.” That label comes straight from Homeland Security officials defending the indefensible. They spun a narrative about “weaponized vehicles” and “violent rioters,” but you can literally watch the video and see with your own eyes that’s a lie. Federal agents boxed her in, gave confusing orders, and then opened fire as she attempted to move her vehicle away from them.
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