ICE & Disinformation Killed Renee Good

ICE fascists killed Renee Good—why were they in MN in the first place?

To understand how ICE ended up murdering Renee Good in broad daylight, we need to go a few weeks back.

Over the past few weeks, a right-wing activist named Nick Shirley released a video alleging widespread fraud in Somali daycare centers in Minnesota. The video relied on anonymous sources, sweeping generalizations, and unsupported claims. I debunked Shirley in detail here, as did local media with extensive detail and receipts. While Shirley offered no verifiable evidence, no meaningful context, and no distinction between allegations, investigations, and adjudicated facts—he succeeded in one thing. That is, he gave Donald Trump the excuse to cut off funding to Minnesota day care facilities, and send more ICE fascists to Minnesota. This decision was not based on facts, but on a narrative that had already been debunked. The consequences of that decision were immediate and irreversible. One such consequence but largely underreported result is the cold blooded execution of Renee Good. This violence is indefensible, and it is certainly not sustainable. Let’s Address This.

Renee Good

The Killing of Renee Good

On January 7, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman and the mother of three children, including a six-year-old. Ms. Good was an American citizen. Her partner had died in 2023. She was killed in broad daylight with her spouse in the front seat, less than a mile from the site where Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. I shared my real time analysis yesterday. Watch below or on YouTube.

Eyewitness accounts indicate that after Ms. Good was shot, ICE agents prevented medical assistance from reaching her for approximately fifteen minutes. Those minutes matter. In trauma medicine, delays of even a few minutes can determine whether a person survives. Similar delays occurred after the shooting of Tamir Rice in 2014, when police prevented aid for four minutes following the shooting of a twelve-year-old child. Tamir Rice died at the scene. Similar delays were likewise enforced for George Floyd, who was killed less than a mile from where Ms. Good was killed.

The parallels are not rhetorical. They reflect a recurring institutional failure to prioritize human life once force has been used, particularly when law enforcement believes itself insulated from accountability. Unfortunately, they are insulated by and large, due to a made up doctrine known as qualified immunity. We’ll address that in a moment.

I have previously written in detail about how individuals can protect themselves during ICE encounters, including their legal rights and steps to reduce risk during interactions. That guidance remains relevant, and this moment underscores why it is necessary.

But no amount of individual preparedness can substitute for systemic accountability.

Hypocrisy and Selective Outrage

Public reactions to Ms. Good’s death have exposed a troubling inconsistency. Online commentators have argued that she should have “complied,” implying that obedience would have ensured her safety. Many of those same voices have previously defended Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while forcibly entering the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 insurrection after ignoring repeated police commands. Most devastating, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is already labeling Good the terrorist, and protecting the ICE fascist who shot and killed her.

This contrast reveals that the concern is not consistently about law enforcement authority or public safety. It is about who is granted sympathy and who is denied it. Such selective outrage undermines any claim to principled commitment to law and order. More importantly, it obscures the structural issue: no civilian—regardless of race, ideology, or citizenship status—should face lethal force from federal agents operating without transparency or accountability.

Political Responsibility

This tragedy did not occur in a vacuum. We know MAGA Republicans have been near united in funding ICE fascists to the tune of $100B or more, making them the fourth largest army in the world. But corporate Democrats remain complicit. Last year, 75 Democratic members of Congress voted alongside Republicans to pass a resolution expressing gratitude to ICE and calling for increased cooperation between ICE and state and local governments. These votes were cast despite extensive evidence of systemic abuse within the agency. Many of those lawmakers are now seeking reelection, including some running for the U.S. Senate. Is your lawmaker on this list? Take note, and vote them out.

Accountability in a democracy requires more than partisan loyalty. It requires a willingness to evaluate institutions based on their conduct and their consequences. The continued political support for ICE, in light of repeated preventable deaths, demands serious reconsideration.

What Must Change? Abolish ICE, End Qualified Immunity

Unlike every developed country in the world, U.S. law enforcement kills more than 1,000 Americans a year. Part of the reason this violent practice thrives is due to a concept known as qualified immunity. What is qualified immunity?

In short, qualified immunity is a racist concept enforced without any legislation to protect the structures of white supremacy. Don’t take my word for it, understand the history as related by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund:

The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 — part of a series of Enforcement Acts established to protect Black people’s rights — allows people to sue government officials for civil rights violations. But the Supreme Court has determined that, even though this act’s provisions say nothing about officials being granted immunity, common law at the time the act was passed dictated that government officials did in fact have immunities that protected them from lawsuits. Qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine that has evolved from this reasoning. The doctrine protects government officials, including law enforcement and prison officials, from being sued unless they are found to have violated “clearly established law” — an unreasonable and deeply stringent standard that requires victims to point to a nearly identical case of unconstitutional conduct in their attempts to obtain justice.

In other words, to convict this ICE fascist who killed Renee Good, Good’s family would need to point to another precise example where an ICE fascist killed someone in the way Good was killed, and faced legal accountability. Otherwise, the pretzel logic of qualified immunity holds him immune from prosecution.

This concept exists nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in federal law, and nowhere in state law. It is literally made up doctrine enforced arbitrarily to protect law enforcement from accountability when they abuse their power and kill people. The murder of Renee Good is another example of why we must end qualified immunity, ensure criminal accountability, and ultimately abolish ICE. Indeed, calls to defund and abolish ICE are not rhetorical gestures; they reflect a growing recognition that the agency’s structure and mandate are incompatible with basic human rights standards.

Conclusion

Renee Good’s killing should end any illusion that this is simply a debate about “immigration enforcement” or “politics as usual.” A 37-year-old American mother is dead. Three children are now growing up without a parent. And the chain of events that led here was not inevitable—it was chosen. It was chosen by propagandists who manufactured a narrative to incite fear, by politicians who exploited that fear for power, and by institutions that operate with minimal transparency and total impunity.

If you are outraged, channel that outrage into action. Demand the prosecution of the agent who killed Renee Good. Demand the end of qualified immunity. Demand that lawmakers stop funding and laundering the reputation of an agency with a documented pattern of abuse—and that they stop asking for our votes while collaborating with the very machinery that keeps producing these tragedies.

And if you value fact-based advocacy that names what is happening, documents it, and refuses to normalize it, I need your support. Corporate media will move on. Politicians will hedge. But I will not. Subscribe—free or paid—so we can keep building a platform that speaks truth, holds power accountable, and fights for a country where no child is orphaned because disinformation was allowed to metastasize into state violence.