We’ve all had a week to process the death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Some of us, myself included, clearly see this as murder—completely avoidable, unnecessary and deeply tragic. Others apparently see it as justifiable self-defense, claiming that Good was a “domestic terrorist” attempting to run over a federal agent with her car.
Never mind that she was steering the car away from Ross as she tried to leave the scene. Never mind that she was a caring mother, having just dropped off her son at school. Never mind that she was a U.S. citizen. And never mind that her last words immediately before being shot were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”
Yes, Renee Good and her wife were part of a schoolboard-supported group called ICE Watch engaging in non-violent civil disobedience to warn people about the presence of federal agents in her neighborhood. And yes, if Good had resisted a legitimate arrest of some kind by attempting to drive away, she could conceivably have been detained for that. Not shot three times in the head and killed. And not being called a “fucking bitch” as she died.
Shame on us as a nation. We have twice put a president in the White House who has given permission to his officials and the public at large to seek retribution (for him) and to behave in hateful and sometimes violent ways. After viewing a video of Good’s killing, Trump reportedly said it was “a horrible thing to watch.” But he was talking about the ICE agent, not Ms. Good, saying it was hard to believe that the agent was still alive. He continued with, “… 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.”
All this took me back to 1970 and the killing of the four unarmed students at Kent State University by the Ohio State National Guard. President Nixon immediately supported the Guard’s actions, as did the governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, who compared the Vietnam war-protesting students to “brownshirts” and declared them to be “the worst type of people we harbor in America.” This was a watershed moment in our history, and the government-appointed Scranton Commission ultimately concluded that the killings of the four students were clearly unjustified. The Commission also noted that the Ohio National Guard’s use of loaded rifles was a critical failure; and that, despite the students’ rock throwing and disruptive behavior, the use of lethal force was unjustified.
Will we see anything like this investigation in the wake of Renee Nicole Good’s killing? It seems unlikely, at least in the short run, as the current DOJ efforts are focused on investigating Good’s wife—not the ICE agent. But perhaps there is a glimmer of hope. Six Minnesota prosecutors have now resigned from the Justice Department in protest.
Unfortunately, one of the many differences between the situation in 1970 and that of today is that we’re not talking about the actions of a single state National Guard unit. We’re facing the undisciplined thuggery of a federal agency. Our president, via his so-called Big Beautiful Bill, has increased the funding of ICE by $75 Billion, ostensibly to more strongly enforce immigration laws but, in actual effect, to become a domestically focused army under his command.
ICE is not yet a modern-day Gestapo, but given Trump’s insatiable desire for power and the unwillingness of Congress and the Supreme Court to limit him, the slope toward a federal tool of explicit oppression, fear, and violence seems slippery indeed. In fact, I would argue that we’re already well beyond mid-slide. Along with the lower federal court system, which seems to be awakening to the danger, we must all raise our voices in continual, intensive, but non-violent protests to fill the gap left by our other more compliant institutions. And then, come November, we must vote. Overwhelmingly.
Susan Edsal, author and blogger, makes the point more personally and powerfully in her posting this morning. She recounts her own experience decades ago as a seventh grader when she first learned about the horrifying reality of the Holocaust and the Gestapo. Concluding her essay today, she writes, “I hope Renee Good does not rest in peace. I hope she rises, bloody and bawling, to haunt the nightmares of every legislator, of every Trump appointee, of every person who cannot find a way to act in accordance with a clear, collective moral code. I hope no one gets a moment of peace until we change.”