Holy f***: Trump policy kills a woman in Minneapolis
Protestors in Portland have been making fun of the extreme statements about Portland being out of control by wearing costumes at protests ("Portland’s Theater-of-the-Absurd Protests Reflect the Ridiculousness of Trump’s Lies," The Nation).
There's been a lot written about Trump using the National Guard as a tool to terrorize "Democrat cities" ("Trump’s use of National Guard troops on American streets is bad enough. This could be worse," Rhode Island Current), like Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Ostensibly, the troops have been sent to cities “overrun” with crime. Yet data shows that has not been the case. Troops have been sent to largely Democratic-run cities in Democratic-led states.
The case for political theater being the real reason behind the deployment certainly was strengthened when largely Republican Mississippi sent troops to Washington D.C., even though crime in Mississippi cities like Jackson is higher than in D.C. Additionally, there is an even more dangerous purpose to the troop presence — that of normalizing the idea of troops on the streets, a key facet of authoritarian rule.
There are fundamental differences in training and mission between military troops and civilian law enforcement, with troop presence raising the potential for escalation and excessive force, and the erosion of both civil liberties and military readiness.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that the justification used by the Administration was flawed, and ordered them to stop ("Supreme Court rejects Trump’s effort to deploy National Guard in Illinois," SCOTus blog, "The Supreme Court has taken the National Guard away from Donald Trump," Economist). Separately, as DC is subordinate to the federal government, NG troops are still in the city.
Of the many objections to the entry of federal law enforcement personnel into cities is their lack of training on urban policing, nor in de-escalation. Armed troops are by definition escalatory. It doesn't help that the Administration lies about what happens in their various engagements with protestors.
Another objection is that putting such forces in cities provides reputational risk to the military, because it's not what they are supposed to do. In a way, although a bit different, it's not unlike how the British, during the Revolutionary War, forced residents to billet soldiers, at their own expense. Here, it's a city being forced to take the brunt of the action by the military.
We know about the Administration's multi-faceted anti-immigrant program ("Protecting The American People Against Invasion" White House) with overtones of White Christian Nationalism ("The wrath of Stephen Miller," Atlantic), which has resulted in the imprisonment and/or deportation of many thousands of people. It's not uncommon for US citizens to be swept up in the actions, and imprisoned ("We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days," ProPublica).
Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel are able to operate in cities independent of the court judgements about the National Guard.
And they are armed and aggressive. Armed, not well trained Guardsman killed protestors at Kent State University in 1970 ("Kent State University marks 55th anniversary of May 4 shootings," Ideastream/NPR) but before that at the Historically Black College, Orangeburg State College in South Carolina, in 1968 where three students were killed ("Feb. 8, 1968: Orangeburg Massacre," Zinn Education Project).
One particularly egregious aggression was the raiding of an apartment building in Chicago ("“I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime," ProPublica, "Stories from the federal siege of Chicago," Chicago Sun-Times).
That's escalated. Today, we have the killing of an American citizen in Minneapolis ("Eyewitness describes ICE shooting that killed woman in Minneapolis," NBC).
With the director of ICE as part of the operation!
The Boston Globe has a video link of the engagement, and there is no question the ICE agent murdered the driver, a 37 year old woman. ICE agents too, aren't well trained, for urban incursions. This is the result.
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U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino joins federal agents at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost via AP) Ellen Schmidt/AP
Ironically it's 5 years plus one day since the Trump-inspired violent protests at the US Capitol ("Jan. 6 insurrection," Washington Post). The Administration just put up a webpage lying about what happened ("White House unveils Jan. 6 webpage saying Democrats ‘staged the real insurrection,’ criticizing Capitol Police," The Hill).
One protestor, Ashlii Babbitt, was shot and killed by a member of the Capitol Police. She's been made a martyr of the hard right, and under Trump, her family got a payout ("Trump administration to pay nearly $5M in wrongful death lawsuit of Jan. 6 rioter shot by police," Politico). She was rioting. Rioting isn't protected speech. She was a criminal. Trump also pardoned most of the people found guilty of rioting that day.
Not the lady in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, she's just dead. Say her name... ("‘She was an amazing human being’: Mother identifies woman shot, killed by ICE agent," Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
The Administration is justifying the murder ("Live updates: Hundreds protest in Minneapolis after ICE officer kills woman," AP). Calling the person driving away a "domestic terrorist" ("DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s comments in wake of woman’s fatal shooting by ICE agent," MST).
“He’s been in situations like this before, and he certainly has been out there and followed his training today,” said Noem at the evening news conference in Minneapolis.
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Noem appeared to reference the same officer when she said that, back in June, he’d been rammed and dragged by an “anti-ICE” motorist.
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The Republicans in Congress are supine in the face of the Administration's aggressions not just against the Constitution, but of the American People.
You would think this killing would be a moment comparable to when Senator Joe McCarthy's lies were challenged by Joseph Welch, the U.S. Army's chief counsel at one of McCarthy's many hearings about communists in government.
He said: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
That was the moment of McCarthy's downfall. Were this to be a similar moment.
Sanctioned state violence. The Trump Administration is one of the most violent in terms of how it deals with citizens and immigrants. But this is not unique to the nation's history, with raids against "communists" in the 1870s and 1920s, anarchists (1910s), labor unions (1890s-1930), and the treatment of certain immigrant groups throughout history (Chinese, Mexicans, Jews).
But today it seems the US is taking its cues from Hungary and Russia, where the media is controlled and universities are subjugated, and countries like Chile under Pinochet, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel, China--Israel ("Watched, Tracked, and Targeted Life in Gaza under Israel’s all-encompassing surveillance regime," New York Magazine) and China are probably the most developed surveillance states in the world, more intricate than the Apartheid period of South Africa.
Trump constantly threatens to stop elections and interfere with elections ("Trump’s Jokes About Canceling Midterm Elections Aren’t So Funny Anymore," Esquire), which is front and center in Erdoğan's regime in Turkey.
Plus there is the prosecution of Trump "opponents" such as James Comey (former director of the FBI) and Letitia Wilson (State Attorney General of New York).
Poland is an example that had degraded in terms of freedoms of citizens but is on a turnaround, with the election as president of Donald Tusk. So it can be reversed.
It's incredible though that the US has reached this nadir. I never thought that when I studied Latin America in political science courses in college, that the readings foreshadowed today's United States of America.
Labels: emergency management planning, immigration, law and the legal process, policing, protest and advocacy, US Constitution
posted by Richard Layman @ 8:25 PM&Permanent Link
11 Comments:
It will get worse before it gets better, and I'm not convinced it can ever get better. Everything is broken.
It is incredibly disheartening. Every day, something worse. And zero checks within the executive branch or by Congress, and extreme acquiescence by the Supreme Court, which is even muzzling "heroic" district judges doing the right thing.
Blistering report says D.C. police lost public trust by working with ICE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/01/08/trump-takeover-immigration-ice-dc/
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/minneapolis-ice-killing-renee-good-tim-walz-jacob-frey-20260108.html
Minneapolis ICE murder is Trump’s Waterloo in America’s war for the truth
After federal agents' senseless killing of Renee Good, will Americans believe a rogue government or their own eyes?
In reality, the violent, reckless actions by masked agents of an American secret police were nothing new, and neither was the government’s massive assault on the truth of what happened in Minneapolis, ripped from the pages of a fascist playbook.
But this time, millions of Americans could see what really happened to Good, thanks to multiple videos taken on that South Minneapolis street by everyday citizens with a righteous distrust of their own government. It’s the deep skepticism that began with three gunshots and a blurry home movie in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. Now, the digital clarity of three gunshots at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2026 may have marked a kind of Waterloo, a righteous turning point in our existential war over the truth.
The senseless killing of Good was exactly the tragedy that state and city officials had feared when DHS declared at the start of the new year that it was flooding Minnesota — whose large community of Somali-American refugees had been viciously slurred by Trump as “garbage” — with some 2,000 armed, masked immigration agents.
Federal agents are only allowed to fire into a moving car when they believe the driver is trying to kill or maim them or other bystanders. As videos of Good’s killing circulated Wednesday afternoon, an unnamed DHS official told NBC News that the agents’ actions — from approaching the vehicle from the front, to firing the fatal shots — went against their training. But how can the public expect sound decision-making from a surge of inexperienced new hires that ICE recruits on social media or in slick ads during NFL games, with plans to target gun shows and military enthusiasts?
What’s more, why would the Trump regime tell the truth about killing Good when its entire Minnesota operation — along with everything else about its immoral mass-deportation drive — is built atop a foundation of despicable lies, from the White House racist slander of Somali refugees seeking a better life in Minnesota to the gross exaggerations (spiked by a dishonest viral video) about a child-care fraud scandal?
Wednesday’s ICE murder carried the grim echoes of past government killing across the upper Midwest — an icy wind that blows from the massacre at Wounded Knee through the 1969 assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton and over Floyd’s senseless demise. Yet there is also reason to feel that, this time, a change is in the air.
It’s the revolutionary spirit we’ve been seeing all across America for months — regular folks from the community blowing whistles, filming ICE raids, and telling the world that our citizens will defend their communities even when all the big institutions and their overpaid leaders will not. Authoritarian governments only thrive in their own manufactured reality, gaslighting the masses that their hard-working brown-skinned neighbor is a rapist, or that an uninjured federal agent is instead in the ER.
Mark down Jan. 7, 2026 as the day America started turning off the gas, and the masks came off. No wonder it came out Thursday morning that the FBI is not cooperating with Minnesota state authorities on the investigation, in a pathetic too-late effort at covering this mess up.
Murder is ok with Hilton Companies
Hilton drops Minneapolis hotel over cancelled ICE bookings
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/hilton-drops-minneapolis-hotel-over-175710060.html
ICE killing of driver in Minneapolis involved tactics many police departments warn against − but not ICE itself
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ice-killing-driver-minneapolis-involved-220422986.html
Debates over deadly force are often contentious, but as I note in my research on police ethics and policy, for the most part there is consensus on one point: Policing should reflect a commitment to valuing human life and prioritizing its protection. Many use-of-force policies adopted by police departments endorse that principle.
Yet, as in Minneapolis, controversial law enforcement killings continue to occur. Not all agencies have implemented prohibitions on shooting at vehicles. Even in agencies that have, some policies are weak or ambiguous.
In addition, explicit prohibitions on shooting at vehicles are largely absent from the law, which means that officers responsible for fatal shootings of drivers that appear to violate departmental policies still often escape criminal penalties.
ICE’s current use-of-force policy prohibits its officers from “discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle” unless it is necessary to stop a grave threat. The policy is explicit that deadly force should not be used “solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.”
Shooting to prevent the driver simply from getting away would have been in violation of agency policy and obviously inconsistent with prioritizing the protection of life.
ICE’s policy lacks clear instruction, however, for its officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles where feasible. In contrast, the Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy makes it explicit that officers should not shoot at a vehicle if they can protect themselves by “moving out of the path of the vehicle.”
Federal agents shoot two in Portland, local media reports
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/federal-agents-shoot-two-in-portland-local-media-reports
Demand transparency and justice in fatal ICE shooting
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/demand-transparency-and-justice-in-fatal-ice-shooting/
Next they'll claim the ICE officer was killed, but he's better now
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2026/01/08/ice-shooting-minneapolis-renee-nicole-good-kristi-noem
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/i-went-to-the-street-where-an-ice-agent-killed-renee-good-this-is-what/article_a5167801-920b-47b4-b9ec-3213eefd1609.html
I went to the street where an ICE agent killed Renee Good. This is what I learned about America in the age of Donald Trump
What stands out in retrospect is that he never dropped his phone. He pulled his gun. He fired. He killed a woman — an entire being full, no doubt, of all the vast subtleties of any human life — and he never dropped his phone. Not when the car swerved forward. Not when he squeezed the trigger. Not even after it was clear to him that she was hit.
A masked agent of the American government killed a woman on the streets of Minneapolis and he never dropped his phone.
Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, shot and killed Renee Good, a 38-year-old poet, mother and partner, on a street full of pretty, ramshackle homes in this Midwestern city Wednesday. Good had reportedly just dropped her six-year-old son off at a charter school 12 blocks away before it happened.
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The ICE shooting in Minneapolis is a warning to all Americans
https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/the-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-is-a-warning-to-all-americans/article_e31fd49d-66e8-445e-b69d-01456d6beee0.html
Aggressive tactics used on Minneapolis protesters raise concerns about federal officer training
https://apnews.com/article/minneapolis-protests-immigration-agents-crowd-control-policing-ice-dhs-bd9335c2b0b793a3bff5c51287a80819
Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.
They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.
The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.
Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.
Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn’t seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”
“You can’t even say this doesn’t meet best practices. That’s too high a bar. These don’t seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.
“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”
Adams noted that police department practices have “evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”
Abolish ICE? It’s a Slogan Some Democratic Critics of ICE Would Abolish.
As Democrats grow more alarmed about the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in American cities, some worry that calls to eliminate the agency will distract from efforts to rein it in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/politics/democrats-abolish-ice-slogan.html
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