The ICE agent who killed Renee Nicole Good not only can be held accountable for murder—he must be.
Community members hold a vigil following the fatal shooting of Renée Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.(Jaida Grey Eagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Trump administration has murdered another person. On Wednesday, ICE agents killed a woman, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, who was not engaged in any illegal activity.
The story unfolded early yesterday morning as ICE was apparently conducting some kind of action not far from Good’s home. Her car was in the road, obstructing it somewhat, while community members and ICE agents shouted back and forth. In a video, an ICE officer can be seen exiting a vehicle and attempting to open Good’s car door. She briefly backs up, and then attempts to drive away. A different ICE agent positioned in front of the vehicle then fires three shots at point-blank range into the car, killing Good.
Director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed that Good was “involved in an act of domestic terrorism.” A DHS spokesperson said that Good attempted to “weaponize her vehicle” and run over ICE agents.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey immediately called DHS’s justifications for murder “bullshit.” Again, there is video of the incident, and that video shows that, as usual, DHS and the Trump administration are lying. It shows a nonviolent encounter that turns deadly when an ICE agent unloads his gun into a car at an unarmed woman.
The Trump administration has committed many murders, and they haven’t been held accountable for any of them, but this time should be different. That’s because this murder took place in Minnesota, and there are state laws that prevent the murder of nonviolent people. These laws should operate even when the murderer is a federal agent.
Federal agents do not have immunity from state murder charges—when they commit murder. Now, obviously, that tautology is a little circular. What it means is that Minneapolis officials will first have to determine that a murder occurred. I’d say that shouldn’t be hard to do, based on the video, but I’m Black and therefore know too well how prosecutors can refuse to see a murder that happens right before their eyes if a law enforcement officer is the one doing the murdering.
Good was a white lady, so I’m hoping that allows people to see what clearly happened. She was trying to drive away from ICE, not run over them. The officer was not threatened with deadly force but still pumped three bullets into her car. That is murder.
Assuming Minneapolis prosecutors do, in fact, want to prosecute a murder that happened in broad daylight, on video, on their streets, the ICE officer’s status as a federal agent should provide him no relief. States can prosecute federal officers who violate state laws. According to the Supreme Court, only Trump enjoys immunity to shoot someone in the middle of a street and get away with it. Everybody else is supposed to be subject to the law.
An excellent post from Bryna Godar in Slate reminds me that the most on-point example of this lack of immunity occurred after the Ruby Ridge fiasco in the 1990s. Back then, an FBI sniper shot and killed an unarmed woman while the feds were besieging a cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Then Attorney General Janet Reno declined to prosecute the sniper, but officials in Idaho did. After a court battle, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the prosecution could go forward (though charges were later dropped when the Idaho prosecutor left the job). There are other, older instances of federal officials facing state prosecution.
Criminal immunity extends only to agents who are performing their federal duties. Despite the way ICE tends to operate, murdering unarmed civilians is not part of the official duties of ICE agents.
Still, bringing the ICE murderer to justice won’t be simple. Unfortunately, the lengthy immunity fight in this case will probably last years and end up in the Supreme Court, where six Republicans stand at the ready to lick Trump’s boots and grant him whatever illegal thing he’s asking for. What this means is that the best hope for holding this officer accountable would probably involve dragging out the case, past 2028, when a post-Trump Supreme Court may be more inclined to prevent federal agents from murdering civilians. A change in the administration might make the Supreme Court think very differently about whom federal officials should be allowed to kill.
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It won’t be easy to charge and convict the officer with murder. It never is. Law enforcement enjoys a broad prerogative, given to them by white people in this country, to kill who they want. Still, Minneapolis prosecutors must try. Not trying would make them complicit in this evil.
In the immediate term, prosecuting or attempting to prosecute this one homicidal ICE officer will not keep the citizens of Minneapolis safe from ICE agents. For that, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will have to take bolder action. In the wake of the shooting, Walz issued a “warning order” to the Minnesota National Guard, essentially telling them to prepare to be deployed.
“To Minnesotans,” Walz said in his announcement about readying the National Guard, “they’re there to protect you and protect your constitutional rights.”
Walz should go all the way and deploy his National Guard to protect the rights of Minnesotans who are being harassed and, now, murdered by ICE. Walz said Minnesota has “never been at war with the federal government,” but in the words of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, “war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.” At some point state governors are going to have to join their people and stand up to armed paramilitary forces who are invading their states and abducting or killing their people.
If the governors don’t, the killings will continue, because the people are not backing down. The people are doing everything they can to resist ICE peacefully, and ICE has consistently responded with violence. It’s time for the governors to have their people’s backs.
The next time a woman gets caught in the middle of an ICE raid—and there will be a next time. because women are not afraid of these boys playing at fascism—she should be defended by National Guard troops. At the very least, those troops need to be on hand to apprehend and arrest on the spot any future murderers wearing ICE clothing.
Elie MystalTwitterElie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, both published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” here.