After the ICE Killing in Minneapolis, Will Truth Prevail?

Sometimes reality is over-scripted. But the victim’s name turned out to be Good.

Renee Nicole Good, 37, was murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis Wednesday morning. She seemed to be trying to turn away from an ICE caravan, when an agent ran up to her window and shot her three times, apparently in the face. We only learned her name many hours later. It was the ninth ICE shooting since September. She was a US citizen (and white).

If the videos of Good’s murder—there are many angles—showed the gunshot wounds, they would be pulled off (most) social media. Networks would never air them. Because, somehow, no angle showed bloody carnage, we can watch multiple videos, which were to me almost equally devastating. She might have started out blocking an ICE show-of-force motorcade. That’s not even clear yet. After we hear the gunshots, the videos showed Good’s Honda veer sharply left, then crash into parked cars; then we heard the car horn going off. I don’t know if that’s because she collapsed onto it, or if that’s what cars do when they crash. I’m blessed not to know.

This is the longest video I’ve seen of the killing and the aftermath. It’s very hard to watch.

There’s a video of a doctor who was her neighbor, trying to find out if she was OK. ICE didn’t allow it.

We saw video of her neighbors begging ICE agents to get to Good’s car to see if she was alive. ICE blocked them.

We also saw video of a white airbag covered with red blood inside her car. Her glove compartment was filled with stuffed animals. She had a 6-year-old child. Her partner stood on the sidewalk, screaming as she was gunned down.

Contacted by reporters, Good’s mother said, “She was probably terrified.… She was loving, forgiving and affectionate.”

That wasn’t Homeland Security Official Kristi Noem’s line. She insisted that “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them,” after which an ICE officer fired “defensive shots.” (She reiterated this bullshit hours later, after we’d seen videos proving her lie.)

Donald Trump, known liar, echoed Noem.

“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting…”

It is all horrible to watch, but not for the reason the liar claimed. Are we really at a point in our society where that lie can prevail over multiple video angles that show the woman was trying to drive away when she was shot three times, up close, by an ICE agent? I pray not.

Mayor Jacob Frey called bullshit immediately—literally. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” Frey said at a news conference. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” He followed up with “a message for ICE: Get the fuck out of Minneapolis!”

Governor Tim Walz, who had just announced that he will not run for reelection, not primarily because of the welfare fraud scandal racking the state but of the threats against his family, came out swinging, courageously.

“We’ve been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt,” Walz said, adding to his fellow Minnesotans: “I feel your anger. I’m angry.” He went on to ask protesters to “please do so peacefully, as you always do…. Do not allow them to invoke the Insurrection Act. Do not allow them to declare martial law.”

I hope local protesters listen to Walz. Trump is looking for an excuse to rain down violence, and yes, martial law. Local protesters followed ICE from the murder scene as its agents seemed to retreat, merely pelting them with the occasional snowball. ICE hasn’t responded yet.

Remember that ICE got extra millions to recruit more agents, and it reduced the qualifications to join the benighted agency. The creep who murdered Renee Nicole Good is still free. This tragedy will happen again. But I hope anti-ICE Minnesotans can walk in the history of nonviolent protest, because these fascists will, if given the chance, make this an excuse not only for an anti-democracy crackdown but for a bloodbath.

Protect one another, please.