What Happens Next In Minnesota?
Sources
Cherone, Heather. “Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Admitted He Lied About Firing Tear Gas, Tackling Protester: Federal Judge.” WTTW News, November 6, 2025. https://news.wttw.com/2025/11/06/border-patrol-chief-greg-bovino-admitted-he-lied-about-firing-tear-gas-tackling.
Fedor, Lauren. “JD Vance Defends Killing of Anti-ICE Protester in Minneapolis.” Financial Times, January 8, 2026. https://www.ft.com/content/a31656fc-eab2-4620-8a57-b5158bced0ae.
Hammond, Elise. “Live Updates: Protesters Clash with Authorities This Morning after ICE Agent’s Killing of Woman in Minneapolis.” CNN, January 8, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/minneapolis-ice-shooting-01-08-26.
Martin, Emmy. “Are Federal Immigration Agents Held to Same Use-of-Force Rules as Local Police?” January 5, 2026. https://www.startribune.com/are-federal-immigration-agents-held-to-same-use-of-force-rules-as-local-police/601551432.
Miller, Heather. “Can Minnesota Prosecute ICE Agents? What the Law Says.” FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, January 8, 2026. https://www.fox9.com/news/can-minnesota-prosecute-ice-agents-what-law-says.
N. B. C. News “Immigration Agent Fatally Shoots Driver in Minneapolis.” NBC News, January 8, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/minnesota-ice-shooting-live-updates-rcna252852.
Staff, FOX 9. “ICE Officer Who Fatally Shot Woman in Minneapolis Identified.” FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, January 8, 2026.https://www.fox9.com/news/ice-officer-minneapolis-shootig-identified.
Transcript
Hi it’s Thursday, December 8, 2026, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Yesterday morning a 37 year old woman named Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by ICE officers in Minneapolis about 2 miles from where I’m currently sitting. Numerous videos of the incident instantly went viral online. Today we’re going to discuss what happened and what’s to come, because despite what our eyes and ears can tell us when we watch those videos, the regime is intent on making us disbelieve our own eyes. Someone wrote about that in a book once. Immediately after videos began circulating, the right wing propaganda machine was quick to whirr into action. Donald Trump took to Truth Social to say “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.” On the mainstream media, CNN gave conservative operative Scott Jennings a platform to blame Democrats for Good’s death, saying quote “I think some of this goes back to Democratic rhetoric, because that’s what they’ve instructed to do, by the Democrats who are demonizing ICE agents.” He said “I want to get to the root cause of why there is a group of people in this country who believe it is their responsibility to drive convoys of vehicles into perfectly legitimate federal law enforcement situations.” You see Jennings is using that handy Kavanagh reasoning–let’s not unpack the underlying law enforcement actions, let’s just assume they are legitimate. The problem with that assumption is that many people are seeing with their own eyes that our government is abusing, harassing, and terrorizing groups of people who are legitimately in this country. So it is not a “perfectly legitimate federal law enforcement situation” SCOTT. Our neighbors are being kidnapped off the streets and disappeared and no one knows what’s happening to them, some of them are dying. And we have a long and illustrious history in this country, SCOTT, of people standing up against a tyrannical government.
Kristi Noem had the audacity to hold a press conference in which she said “Because Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey refuse to protect Minnesotans–and instead they protect these criminals–that’s what we’re here.” As if ICE didn’t just kill a US citizen. She also said “It’s very clear that this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations. Our officer followed his training… and took actions to defend himself and his fellow law enforcement officers… She hit him. He went to the hospital.” There is footage of him casually walking around after having shot Renee Good in the face. He went to the hospital because after a fatal incident like this it is really common for everyone to get medical attention to make sure there weren’t any other injuries. She also called the situation an act of domestic terrorism, a line they love to throw out at every opportunity.
JD Vance appeared at a press conference in which he claimed without evidence that Renee Good was part of a broad network of leftwing radicals. He also claimed that the ICE officer that committed the murder had been dragged by a car earlier last year so he was just really sensitive about cars, an argument that wouldn’t hold up in court but we’ll get into that. JD Vance was also on Twitter spouting all sorts of bullshit, calling Renee Good a “deranged leftist” and the ICE officer was just trying to do his job. She was impeding a, once again, “legitimate” law enforcement action, so it’s her fault. Because they love to say that someone who is summarily executed in the street deserved it if they were getting in the way. A just punishment, she was asking for it. Maybe if George Floyd hadn’t been using a FAKE $20 dollar bill. Execution without a trial or a jury is justified if anyone is breaking the law. But of course that’s not what the law actually says. And that’s not what your eyes tell you if you actually watch the videos.
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Okay so let’s watch the various videos at different angles of the incident. Because there was already chaos in the streets, and the good people of Minneapolis have been taught to document whenever ICE is around, because we’ve been terrorized for the last 2 months, and watched people in other cities be terrorized by ICE for the last year, and we know that anything can happen when ICE shows up, because they’re a bunch of often plain clothes militarized under trained heavily armed idiots who don’t know what they’re doing and are entering into cities that do not what them there. That is a recipe for disaster, as our state officials have been warning about for weeks as Trump has ratcheted up the tension in this state and in this city with his anti-immigrant, anti-Somali rhetoric. And that is precisely what we had happen here yesterday morning.
Of course details are still coming out but we have multiple angles of video evidence of what happened. What has been confirmed is that Renee Good had just dropped her 6 year old child off at school when her and her partner came upon what appeared to be an ICE presence on 34th and Portland in the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis. She stopped and parked her car perpendicular in the street, seemingly to block traffic and attempt to stop ICE. Is that an inherently dangerous activity? Absolutely, you’re getting involved in an active operation involving undertrained heavily armed idiots, that’s gonna be dangerous. I don’t think any training you go to for activists interested in protesting against ICE is going to tell you otherwise. There were already numerous people gathered, that’s why there are so many videos. Did she deserve to BE EXECUTED IN THE STREET BY THE STATE for it? No. Not according to law or morality. The right wing favored angle is one from far away taken from what appears to be a window one story off the ground. It shows a blurry image of the ICE officer making contact with the vehicle as he shoots Renee Good in the face. The ICE officer who committed the murder has been identified as Jonathan Ross
The angle that is much clearer is of course the one that makes the right wing narrative a hell of a lot less convincing. We’ll watch it at regular speed and then break it down. For those listening, you see Renee Good attempt to wave on an ICE vehicle to let them pass in front of her. An ICE officer exits that vehicle and moves quickly towards her car. As he tries to grab the handle she backs up, and then turns the tires away and advances forward as another ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, stands in front of her vehicle. As she advances forward and to the right, away from the officers, Ross shoots her first through the windshield and then through the driver’s side window. Now we’ll watch again but slower. The first ICE officer aggressively walks towards her car and tries to force his way inside. She backs away. As she puts the car in drive, another ICE officer, Ross, the one that ultimately shoots her, is distractedly looking at his phone, presumably filming or talking to someone. The car moves forward with the tires clearly pointed to the right. As Ross unholsters his weapon and points his gun, the car is to the right of him, from our point of view, moving at a few miles an hour. He leans his body over the car to shoot her at as close range as possible, and discharges his weapon at least 3 times. At no point is he on the ground. At no point does the car “run him over” as Trump claimed. The car speeds off likely because she was shot and had her foot on the gas. He casually reholsters his gun and continues playing with his phone. It almost looks like a casual move to him, like he’s been watching movies like this for long enough that he has so normalized just pulling a gun and shooting at someone in the face that it didn’t really seem to shake him up that much. His body language is one of defiance, of I’m going to do whatever I want and it’s justified.
Okay, so that’s my clearly biased take on what happened, though again I think if you use your eyes and your common sense and you shut out the noise of political pundits like me giving you their opinions, and you just imagine if in that moment the officer could reasonably fear for his life such that lethal force was necessary, I think it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that shooting the driver of that car in the face was not a reasonable reaction to the situation.
Okay but I’m a lawyer, what does the law say here? Under state and federal law, an officer’s use of deadly force in self defense is justified if it is necessary to protect the officer or another from death or great bodily harm. This applies whether you’re local police or a federal agent. The standard depends on whether a reasonable officer, under the circumstances, would have acted the same. A reasonable OFFICER, not a reasonable civilian. The United States Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor held that the reasonableness standard cannot be evaluated given the 20/20 hindsight of video footage from multiple different angles but only from the perspective of the officer at the time of the shooting. It also does not matter, in this scenario, that Jonathan Ross had been involved in an incident six months prior during which he was dragged by a car after he smashed into the window and was attempting to unlock the door with his arm inside. That does not matter when you think about whether a REASONABLE officer, in this specific scenario with Renee Good would have acted this way. Would a reasonable officer, under the same circumstances, have believed they were in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. The only time a case can be brought against the officer for murder or manslaughter is if it is found beyond a reasonable doubt that the police officer acted unreasonably, that the use of lethal force was not justified. As you might imagine, this is an incredibly high bar. It is very difficult to prove to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an officer’s use of deadly force was unjustifiable. There are of course facts specific to the case that can weigh in either direction. For instance, if the person was resisting the officer or attempting to flee, that’s going to weigh differently. It is far less reasonable to use deadly force on a person attempting to flee than on one actively resisting. Whether the threat was immediate for great bodily harm is another factor. Was it reasonable for him to believe, in that moment, that a car with its tires pointed away from him attempting to flee with an unarmed woman inside posed an imminent threat of great bodily harm? Beyond a reasonable doubt. Courts have also found that specifically being struck by a vehicle or facing an oncoming vehicle can present a threat requiring the use of deadly force, again depending on the circumstances. Officers across law enforcement are supposed to be trained to evaluate deadly force situations, according to reporting from the Minnesota star tribune, quote “based on whether a person has the ability, opportunity and apparent intent to cause death or serious bodily harm.” The question for a potential jury then is in that moment, based on that officer in those circumstances, would a reasonable officer have perceived the vehicle as such a threat that it imminently would cause extreme bodily harm such that lethal force is justified. That would be up to a jury to decide.
I’m unclear how negligence might play into this case, however. According to reporting from NBC, quote “ICE agents are trained to never approach a vehicle from the front, not to fire at a moving vehicle and to use force only if there's an immediate risk of serious injury or death.” I can’t imagine it is in the training manual to be wandering around an active ICE enforcement scene with your phone in your hand, which this officer was doing in the moments prior to pulling his gun out and shooting this woman. He was so distracted his phone actually never left his hand throughout the incident. Whether a reasonable officer in that situation would have approached a vehicle from the front while also actively being distracted by his phone is a question I’m certainly wondering. Seems, almost, like he was asking for it. If you really think about it.
In any event, if the officer were to be charged in Minnesota state court, he could pretty easily argue that he was acting in his official capacity as a federal agent and then remove his case to federal court, where lord knows any federal prosecutor would be strong armed by the Trump regime to drop any charges against him. If the officer is civilly sued for wrongful death by Renee Good’s family, that is a lower bar for sure and perhaps the family could win some federal compensation, so that us the tax payers would be on the hook for paying for what an idiot ICE officer did. But the likelihood of this officer ever facing prison time is nearly zero.
Further complicating matters, the FBI originally announced a joint investigation with Minnesota officials and later backtracked, saying that they would be exclusively doing the investigation and providing zero evidence or intel to the Minnesota officials. That will make any state prosecution of the officer all the more difficult if the state authorities literally cannot access evidence and information.
Last night, thousands appeared at a vigil at the location of the shooting and local organizations including the twin cities branch of Indivisible sent out a call for protestors to gather this morning outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building near the Minneapolis airport where ICE has setup operations. Hundreds gathered as early as 7am this morning, and around 50 federal law enforcement officers, including the border patrol faced off with protestors, at times attempting de-escalation, and at other times taunting the protestors, who reportedly sometimes taunted back. At one point tear gas and pepper balls were used to disperse the crowd. Head of the border patrol Gregory Bovino also made an appearance, a man who loves to cosplay as a military villain out of some hollywood film and led the increasingly aggressive raids in Chicago and its suburbs a few months ago. The clashes between federal officers and protesters were heated but generally peaceful this morning. People are angry and scared but also not trying to give the regime any pretext to increase the violence and oppression we are already experiencing, especially for our immigrant neighbors who have been terrified of going to work or sending their kids to school for weeks because of increased ICE presence and attention being given to our immigrant communities. I already made a whole video about the very real fraud happening here, you can watch after this.
It’s unclear what happens next in Minneapolis or for the ICE officer that murdered a woman in cold blood on our streets. Speaking personally as someone who has lived in Minnesota my whole life other than a couple stints on the east coast and in south america for college and law school. I’ve lived in Minneapolis for most of the last 15 years. I know the neighborhood where the incident happened very well. It’s called Powderhorn, named after the Powderhorn Park nearby. My husband lived 2 blocks away from there prior to moving in with me and we spent most of COVID quarantined in his basement apartment, including during the summer of 2020 when I was studying for the bar while he stayed up nights as part of a neighborhood safety group to guard his apartment building from the roving armed men in pickup trucks who came to our city during theGeorge Floyd unrest to take advantage of the chaos and cause further damage. We’re of course not the only city being targeted by ICE violence, but to once again be at the center of the national conversation, to be the locus of lethal violence, of the state killing people in the street, is giving everyone I’ve spoken to some flashbacks. Renee Good was murdered 8 blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered and I know the neighborhood there’s a reason that is where the violence happens. It is a lovely, vibrant, working class neighborhood. There are a lot of immigrants and lots of diversity. It’s quirky. There’s this group of kinda steam punk elder millennial theater nerds who run In the heart of the beast puppet and mask theater who make these mechanical floats that they bring out every year for the mayday parade. Real Mad Max shit, like a float with a giant ferris wheel and flame throwers that they keep parked in their backyard. There’s a giant t-rex statue, I think a shark. It’s an institution, you drive around Powderhorn park and see these giant floats parked in random yards because they all live in the neighborhood. For all of COVID there was a free food pantry on the corner where Renee Good was murdered. Modern Times cafe is right around the corner, it’s some of the best diner food and vibes you can get in South Minneapolis. Reverie Cafe is a vegan spot that has the best cinnamon roll I’ve ever had. Friends, people I’ve known for over a decade, live a block or two from the incident. Powderhorn, to me, represents the future that Republicans are terrified of but leftists everywhere dream of. A working class group of people from all walks of life who know how to get scrappy and watch out for their neighbors, who are kooky and arty and make weird art installations and great food and have chickens in their backyards and paint murals on their fences and put free food on their front lawn. It’s rough around the edges but it’s truly a community, the kind that people move to and stay for 30 years because they love it so much. The kind where people are increasingly seeing their neighbors taken off the streets violently by masked men and neighbors are intent on helping their neighbors and protecting the immigrants in the community they share together. And so people are being trained on non-violent resistance, on documenting ICE activities in the area, rapid response groups are forming, people are wearing whistles to blow and alert their neighbors anytime they spot ICE. Because we’ve been seeing it for weeks at this point and we don’t know who these masked men are but they make our communities feel less safe, and Powderhorn is a community where people stand up and do something about it. And yesterday Renee Good was killed by the hands of the state for failing to comply.
And now the leaders of the federal government are using the pile on of the federal propaganda apparatus to tell all of us to ignore what our eyes are telling us, to ignore the law, to ignore the idea of due process. Someone does not deserve to be executed in the street even IF she was attempting to obstruct an ICE operation, the punishment for that isn’t summary execution. If we’re going to try to make the argument well maybe she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, we can just as easily make the argument that well maybe Jonathan Ross shouldn’t have volunteered for a job where he knew he would be put in dangerous positions. Maybe he shouldn’t have put his body in front of a vehicle. Maybe he should be able to mentally and emotionally withstand the fight or flight response associated with his job. He was asking for it.
But the odds are that Jonathan Ross will never be held accountable for Renee Good’s death, and as I speak DHS has vowed to send in more officers to help keep me and my fellow Minnesotan’s safe. They have made it obvious that their presence will only do the opposite. I’ll keep you informed as updates come in. Connect with your community, show up for your neighbors in whatever way that looks like for you. The state wants to break us down, to divide us, to gaslight us into believing something that goes against our sense of sight, our sense of morality. They want us to give up. It is only through holding onto hope and holding onto your community that we get through this.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about Venezuela.
