Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three from Minneapolis, was fatally shot yesterday while behind the wheel of her car attempting to drive away from a group of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents.
Multiple videos of the shooting show Good in her vehicle while ICE agents approach the driver’s side door and another agent, Jonathan Ross, circles round the passenger side, drawing his firearm. Eyewitness reports claim Good was simultaneously being told to stop and to move. In the videos, one agent puts his hand on the driver’s side door when Good curves away to her right. The agent who had circled round from the other side quickly opens fire, shooting Good multiple times in her head and upper body, after which her car briefly accelerates down the block and hits a parked vehicle near the curb.
Social media then rapidly became a national conference of forensic pathologists, analyzing the event from the different angles and asking if Good should have fled, or was being told to move, or was simply scared and reacting, or hit the shooting officer with her car (she didn’t, though one faraway angle distorts this detail) before getting shot (no; he is seen still shooting her after she passes him), or turned her wheels away from him, or had been intentionally blocking the flow of ICE vehicles, or…
Good’s political background is unclear; she enjoyed singing, playing guitar, and writing poetry. She is being called a terrorist by federal officials. But by all accounts she woke up yesterday morning as a regular person.
The Rittenhousian slew of video detail surrounding Renee Good’s death has made me wonder if, while people get ensnared in debating split-second matters of forensics and timing, they’re not succumbing to a subtle form of tyranny — call it The Tyranny of Little Details. It’s when your mind gets so seized by the small picture that you lose the big one.
But the big picture forces you to ask bigger questions:
Why is ICE in Minnesota? (Ostensibly, I know, for a law enforcement effort investigating Somali immigrants.) Why now? Why the military enforcement approach? Why not a civil process, and/or an FBI investigation? We’ve all seen American suburban streets like the one in yesterday’s videos; I live on one. Why there? Isn’t a widespread local military presence unsettling to ordinary American citizens? Don’t men with guns create an atmosphere of fear? Why did the one agent draw his gun? What had he been trained to use it for? Was Renee Good an immigrant? (No, she was born in Colorado.) Was Renee Good clearing customs? (Obviously not.) Was the agent trained to kill people who didn’t listen to, or misunderstood — or understood too well — his colleagues’ orders? Was Good incorrect to be afraid? Did her death not validate her fear? Does ICE have no responsibility to reassure people? Is it not ICE’s fault that people react to them with panic? Had ICE never done anything frightening that Good might have read about in the news?
All over the Internet, for months and years ahead, we will hear about how what happened was the result of individuals making split-second decisions.
Less prominent, expectedly, will be the view that it was the result of the U.S. government making bad ones.
If “the big picture forces you to ask bigger questions”, then let’s ask 1) when did it became a capital offense to drive slowly, 2) why was the death penalty doled out without a trial, and 3) when did public officials gain absolute immunity for crimes they commit? Based on the thinking of this Republican regime, an ICE agent can blow out my brains for no reason, and not be held accountable. We need to reverse this fascist thinking and acting, and return to the rule of law.
.
Article: “JD Vance Says ICE Agent Has ‘Absolute Immunity’ After Minneapolis Shooting“
https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-minneapolis-ice-shooting-defense-immunity-minnesota-11331877
I enjoyed your article. However, your main focus seems to be why the federal government is using a militaristic approach to enforcing immigration law. My answer would be that Minneapolis, like other large Democratic-run large cities, refuses to follow federal immigration laws by declaring themselves “sanctuary cities.” The local law enforcement refuses to notify DHS when they arrest an illegal immigrant for crimes committed in their city, and release them into the community. If there was cooperation, it would not be necessary for the federal government to use a military force to arrest and deport these people who don’t belong in this country. One other point-there is video taken by the ICE officer showing that Nicole Good hit him with her 4000 pound SUV before he fired his shots despite the fact that she could see him clearly. Her wife could be heard saying “Drive Baby Drive” just before Good pressed the accelerator.