After the Trump administration decided that investigating the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good had less to do with the guy who pulled the trigger and more to do with why the victim had the audacity to be in the bullet’s trajectory, an FBI agent from the Minneapolis field office decided his moral compass was incompatible with federal employment.
The level of mental gymnastics deployed by Trump and his buddies-in-crime to change the narrative of Renee Good’s killing from “how did this happen” to “how do we blame the dead woman” or “why was she standing where bullets travel” (you can laugh now, but the rhetoric isn’t far off) is truly astounding.
Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, mother of three, writer, and poet, was shot three times through her car window by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7 while sitting in her maroon Honda SUV on a Minneapolis street. The Trump administration’s immediate response was to declare the shooting self-defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling it an “act of domestic terrorism” and claiming Good had “weaponized her vehicle.”
Now, after a week of turmoil in Minnesota with protests against ICE and its brutal Gestapo tactics, The New York Times reports an FBI agent assigned Good’s case has handed over their resignation, coming on the heels of six other federal prosecutors who walked out over the investigation’s direction. These others also resigned after the Justice Department forced them to investigate Ms. Good and her partner instead of Jonathan Ross, citing their ties to “left-wing protest groups in Minneapolis” as evidence that might fit Trump’s definition of “highly paid professional agitators.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche helpfully announced there was “currently no basis” for a Civil Rights Division investigation into Ross, the agent who did the actual shooting. Instead, federal investigators pivoted to examining whether Good’s partner impeded federal officers in the moments before the shooting. You know, the real crime here: being present while ICE does ICE things.
Despite the administration’s claims that Good was trying to ram the ICE agents with her Honda, video footage clearly shows that she was just trying to get away.
Meanwhile, ICE agents on the ground have reportedly been invoking Good’s death as a warning to protesters. One legal observer arrested during demonstrations reported that an ICE agent told her, “You guys gotta stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” (per Democracy Now)
Well, at least they’re saying the quiet part out loud now.
