Words: Anonymous
CW: Racially Motivated Violence / Racism / Discrimination
The lies told to absolve the guilty are ultimately futile, for the blood of murder will always stain.
On the 7th of January 2026, Renee Nicole Macklin Good was shot four times and murdered by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Renee was a poet, a mother, a wife, a person. In the days following her murder, the Republicans have vilified Good, inventing a version of the encounter that exonerates Ross from accountability. Trump accused her of ‘violently, wilfully, and viciously’ running over an ICE agent, and his Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed Good was killed because she had committed an ‘act of domestic terrorism.’
Footage from the scene tells a vastly different story, revealing the distorted – and entirely false – narrative being constructed to protect ICE’s impunity. Harrowing clips of Good’s last moments show nothing of the oppositional or malicious sentiment that her own government is trying to impose on her. After a calm interaction with the agents, Good tries to drive away from the conflict at hand. She is met with four bullets. A voice is heard: ‘Fucking bitch’, as Good’s car crashes.
‘She literally sparkled’, said Renee’s wife, Becca Good, ‘I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores.’ The Trump administration’s effort to “impurify” the image of Good is a tactic imbued with malicious intent. Reducing victims of state brutality to “domestic terrorists” cleanses ICE’s image, allowing agents to walk away from horrific acts of violence with an appearance of clean hands and a pure heart. The lies told to absolve the guilty are, however, ultimately futile, for the blood of murder will always stain. Murdering Good makes Ross a villain, one who performs the dirty work of the authoritarian state.
The grand narrative, that Ross was simply defending himself, is a clear, baseless attempt to legitimise ICE’s militant presence in defenseless communities. Efforts to dissect Good’s interaction with agents, and to shift blame onto her are prolific in right-wing circles. In the words of The Daily Wire, Good was ‘100% to blame’ for her own death. These attempts are symptomatic of the lengths to which the arms of the fascist state will stretch to justify relentless harm. In a statement provided to Minnesota Public Radio, Becca Good spelled out the harsh reality of the confrontation: ‘We had whistles. They had guns.’ These words speak to the vastly unequal power dynamics underscoring ICE’s interactions with civilians. In any confrontation with ICE, Americans find themselves at the mercy of anonymous, quasi-police vigilantes.
Thinking about how society perceives ICE leads us to question: how do ICE perceive themselves? In interviews conducted as a part of Netflix’s Immigration Nation docuseries, one agent described frustration at being portrayed as the ‘bad guys’, arguing that ‘all we’re doing is enforcing the laws and doing our job’, eerily echoing Nazi justifications of ‘just following orders.’ ICE agents defend themselves on the grounds that they are operating with pure intentions of ensuring national safety. Distorted self-perception is a necessity for these individuals. Without it, they would not be able to perform such senseless acts of cruelty.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz refutes these notions, describing the force as a ‘modern-day Gestapo’. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have come under fire from the right for their disavowal of ICE’s presence in Minneapolis. Though federal judges have limited the tactics that ICE are able to use, it is not enough to merely restrict the institution. As Frey stated, its time for ICE to ‘Get the Fuck Out of Minneapolis’.
ICE’s terrorising presence continues to grow in Minnesota and across the nation, but so does the resistance to it. Despite this, the death toll is mounting. On the 24th of January, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot by ICE agents no less than ten times. The administration has jumped to disparage Pretti, as they did with Good, claiming that he attacked officers. These disparaging claims are once again contradicted by clear video evidence, demonstrating Pretti merely recording ICE agents, and defending observers from their terror. Both killings show this administration’s position: opposition to their regime is befitted by a death sentence.
The refusal to hold agents culpable for their role in carrying out state-sanctioned murder grows increasingly concerning for the rights and liberties of US civilians. The people of Minnesota have declared that enough is enough, and we must stand by them as they strike and protest. ICE can no longer be allowed to leak its poison into vulnerable communities. The individuals holding up this oppressive organisation must be held accountable for the destruction that they cause and the lies that they tell – the depersonalisation of harm will always lead to its perpetuation. We must refuse apathy in the face of senseless persecution, and see these individuals for what they are: willful servants of the oppressive carceral state.
