Abolish ICE Before They Kill Again, Impeach Trump & Noem Before They Incite More Murder

Tragedy

from the there-is-no-dispute dept

Renee Nicole Good was a 37-year-old award-winning poet, a mother of a six-year-old, and a wife who had recently moved to Minneapolis. That all ended yesterday when a masked ICE agent murdered her in broad daylight, shooting her multiple times at close range in the head. She had stuffed animal toys in the glove box of her SUV that rammed into another car after she’d been killed for no reason at all.

We have video of what happened. Multiple angles. The Trump administration is lying about every single detail anyway.

Donald Trump kicked off with a blatant lie, claiming that Good “viciously ran over the ICE officer.”

Known liar, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, called Good a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.”

Kristi Noem made up a complete fantasy:

It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was, our ICE officers were out in enforcement action, they got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis, they were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.

Not a single one of them is telling the truth. They are flat out lying.

Here’s what actually happened. The folks at Bellingcat put together a top down view showing the murder, pieced together from multiple videos:

This morning (after equivocating all day yesterday, as I’ll discuss below), the NY Times put out a video using multiple bystander videos, showing that the ICE agent (1) was not hit (2) was not in the path of the vehicle and (3) was absolutely fine afterwards (contradicting claims from the administration that he was run over and in the hospital). See it here:

From all the evidence, it’s clear that Good had stopped and when ICE agents started demanding she move, she started to pull around the ICE vehicle in front of her. She paused to let another vehicle drive by her. As that happened (for no apparent reason) the ICE agent who eventually murdered her walked around the right side of her car to the front. As he does that two other ICE agents approach the car, with one telling her to exit the car while another yells for her to move. She then proceeds to try to drive away from the ICE agents. The one who had stepped in front of her car steps aside and then just starts madly firing at her head.

He murdered her. And Trump and his cronies are lying about it with video evidence directly contradicting every word.

This isn’t the first time ICE has killed someone. This is actually the ninth such shooting by an ICE agent since September, every single one of which involved an ICE agent blatantly violating policy by firing into a vehicle. This is at least the second outright murder, as opposed to attempted murder.

While ICE conveniently took down its page describing this (got something to hide?), the official policy is that “firearms shall not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles.” Also, “discharging a firearm from a moving vehicle is prohibited.” There are some limited exceptions, but they appear to apply solely to a case where the car is driving directly at an ICE agent.

ICE shouldn’t even be in Minneapolis. It shouldn’t be anywhere. It shouldn’t exist. Nor should it ever have existed, as many of us have warned for many, many years. When we first started writing about ICE over 15 years ago, it was already a lawless organization.

This murder of an American citizen on a quiet street—someone who was just there to observe and monitor ICE agents kidnapping people—exemplifies why ICE is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We’re talking about a masked federal police force, operating in secret, with no apparent limits, no meaningful rules, and no consequences for violence. They’re engaging in lethal force against anyone—citizens and non-citizens alike—because they’ve been given implicit permission by the White House to do whatever they want. MAGA folks mock the Gestapo comparison, but what else do you call an unaccountable secret police force that operates with impunity, murders citizens in broad daylight, and then lies about it with the full backing of the state?

As Chris Geidner points out, it was just a month and a half ago that Judge Sara Ellis called out ICE’s (and CBP’s) lawless nonsense and how dangerous it was:

Further, as detailed in the Court’s factual findings, agents have used excessive force in response to protesters’ and journalists’ exercise of their First Amendment rights, without justification, often without warning, and even at those who had begun to comply with agents’ orders…. While the Court acknowledges that some unruly individuals have been present during these gatherings, their presence among “peaceful protestors, journalists and legal observers does not give Defendants a blank check to employ unrestricted use of crowd control weapons,” and, in many of the instances in which agents deployed less lethal munitions, they did not direct the force anywhere near such bad actors…. Agents’ “use of indiscriminate weapons against all protesters—not just the violent ones—supports the inference that federal agents were substantially motivated by Plaintiffs’ protected First Amendment activity.”

Judge Ellis also called out DHS’s systematic lying—the same pattern we’re seeing now:

While Defendants may argue that the Court identifies only minor inconsistencies, every minor inconsistency adds up, and at some point, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent

And yes, they will lie in the face of directly contradictory video evidence. Judge Ellis again:

Presumably, these portions of the videos would be Defendants’ best evidence to demonstrate that agents acted in line with the Constitution, federal laws, and the agencies’ own policies on use of force when engaging with protesters, the press, and religious practitioners. But a review of them shows the opposite—supporting Plaintiffs’ claims and undermining all of Defendants’ claims that their actions toward protesters, the press, and religious practitioners have been, as Bovino has stated, “more than exemplary.”

A federal judge warned us six weeks ago that DHS and ICE would likely kill people and lie about it even when video proved them wrong. Yesterday proved her right. Again.

I had a few other stories I planned to write up on Wednesday, not to mention taking care of some other work, and I spent most of the day just unable to do anything, feeling sick to my stomach.

Yes, this happens in America (and elsewhere), but it shouldn’t. This is fucked up.

As 404 Media points out, this has become the standard course of action by the Trump admin these days.

This is a pattern. Some event happens as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, DHS rushes out a misleading, wrong, or incendiary statement that does not reflect reality, and it becomes another piece of ammo for the X.com grifters, right wing media ecosystem, or people who just love the idea of others being hurt.

And, again, why the fuck is ICE even in Minneapolis anyway? Because a small-time MAGA grifter YouTuber made a misleading video a few weeks ago claiming day care centers in Minneapolis were running a scam. His “evidence”? The day cares had locked doors and wouldn’t let him in with his cameras—which is what day cares do when random people show up demanding entry.

Noem is claiming that ICE had to be in Minneapolis based on her lies that the city is “dangerous” and full of “criminals” who don’t belong there. But as multiple people have pointed out there has been only one murder in Minneapolis in 2026.

It was the one committed by this ICE agent yesterday.

The Trump MAGA DHS position is that if you don’t immediately submit in every possible way, they will frame you as a “threat” who they can kill with impunity. Defector’s summary is exactly right:

Now that the Trump administration has shown it will immediately make up a flagrant lie in an attempt to justify the summary execution of a U.S. citizen, on video, in broad daylight—and will outright valorize the ICE agent who drew his pistol and killed a civilian for the crime of moving her vehicle a few feet—the message is clear, to ICE agents and everyone else: Nothing constrains these agents except whatever inhibits any individual one of them, personally, from brutalizing and murdering any person who disobeys them….

In the eyes of the state and its agents, all of the rest of us are walking around with a standing presumption, not just of guilt, but of murderous intent. Anything but total and immediate submission is domestic terrorism. It’s punishable by whatever the masked and unidentified government agent pointing a gun at your face decides to dish out.

And, of course, the compliant media is playing its part. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post initially embraced the view-from-nowhere approach of claiming the events around the shooting are “disputed.”

The old journalism joke is that if one person tells you it’s sunny outside and the other says it’s raining, you don’t report that the weather is disputed. You go the fuck outside and check. We have the video here. Multiple angles. It shows exactly what happened. But the Times and Post were treating the administration’s obvious lies as equally valid to the documented evidence because… why? Because acknowledging that a federal agency will murder a citizen and then lie about it in the face of video evidence is too uncomfortable? This isn’t neutral journalism—it’s active complicity in state violence. When the media treats documented murder and transparent lies as a “dispute,” they’re telling every ICE agent that there will be no accountability, no matter how clear the evidence.

Yes, eventually, this morning, both the NY Times and the Washington Post published more thorough investigations, showing that the administration is lying. But they let the “dispute” stand for 24 hours, allowing the administration to set the narrative that will live on. And even now they’re using equivocal language. The Post’s story talks about how the video evidence “raises questions about” what the admin is saying, rather than just coming out and saying that they’re LYING.

And I won’t get into how state media like Fox News is reporting on this: focusing on whatever it could dig up about Good to mock her, as if anything in her personal life or views somehow justifies her being murdered. Or all the GOP elected officials going on TV trying to pretend that she might have deserved to have been murdered in the street.

Yes, I know that in these tribal times so many people are playing the team sports thing of just immediately defending their cult leader. Going on X and looking around, you see just an overwhelming flood of absolute bullshit from MAGA folks cracking jokes (remember when they wanted people fired for joking about Charlie Kirk’s murder?) and trying to spin the story, knowing full well it’s all bullshit.

But some are seeing through it. A neighbor near where the murder happened, who identified himself as “right leaning,” admitted that the situation shook him, as “this is not how we’re supposed to be doing things in America.”

He’s right. And it is beyond disgusting that so many powerful forces in our government and the media are trying to twist and manipulate the story to justify an out of control ICE.

The only appropriate response here is to shut down ICE. Shut down DHS. Yes, there are important and necessary roles in DHS, but they existed without DHS before it was formed two decades ago, and we can redistribute those roles elsewhere in the federal government. But we don’t need ICE. We don’t need a secret federal police that goes around in masks kidnapping and murdering people.

It’s about as un-American as you can imagine.

This murder has at least appeared to wake some politicians from their slumber. We’ve seen multiple Democratic politicians, especially in Minnesota, speak out as forcefully as I’ve seen politicians speak out in years, telling ICE to get the fuck out of Minneapolis and calling out the administration’s lies directly. That matters. When officials with actual power are willing to name the truth—that ICE murdered a citizen and the administration is lying about it—it creates space for others to do the same.

But also thousands came out to memorialize Renee Nicole Good, in the freezing cold in a Minneapolis January. Hundreds turned up at a training session for legal observers, even as hundreds more are already patrolling Minneapolis, observing ICE’s illegal actions, and doing so knowing that ICE and DHS won’t hesitate to shoot them dead.

That’s what a movement looks like when institutions fail. Not waiting for someone to save us, but showing up in the freezing cold to say: you will not do this in our name. You will not kill our neighbors without witness. You will not lie about it unchallenged.

I’m going to leave this post up for a while before we post anything else. This matters more than the usual tech policy stories right now.

There are plenty of things going on that are infuriating. Ever day this administration finds new ways to spit on the Constitution. We’re still dealing with the illegal invasion of Venezuela, and apparent plans to attack multiple other nations around the Western Hemisphere.

But Renee Nicole Good’s murder cuts through all of that noise. A masked federal agent murdered an American citizen in broad daylight for no reason at all. The administration lied about it with video evidence directly contradicting every word. The media called it “disputed.” And thousands of people said no.

The institutional guardrails have failed. The courts warned us this would happen and it happened anyway. The media won’t hold power accountable. So the work falls to us—to show up, to document, to refuse to accept the lies, to make the cost of this violence too high to sustain.

ICE must be abolished. This cannot stand. And anyone who makes excuses for what happened yesterday has chosen a side, and it’s not the side of America or freedom or anything resembling justice.

Renee Nicole Good was a poet, a mother, and a citizen murdered by her own government for the crime of existing near an ICE agent having a bad day. Remember her name. Remember what they did. And remember that they lied about it even with the cameras rolling.

Filed Under: dhs, donald trump, ice, kristi noem, minneapolis, murder, renee nicole good, tricia mclaughlin