ICE and Border Patrol were bound to kill someone. Charlotte showed us that

ICE and Border Patrol agents’ killing of a Minneapolis woman was foreshadowed by their violent tactics in North Carolina, Louisiana, Portland, and Illinois. 

Masked federal immigration agents shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis Wednesday. 

Renee Nicole Good, 37, appears to have been blocking traffic with her car while immigration agents were conducting an operation, according to video footage captured by witnesses. 

People are furious. Grieving. Angry. But many of us saw this coming when federal troops began their military incursion into North Carolina in November. I’m reminded of one moment in particular, one that ended much better than the shooting in Minneapolis Wednesday. 

Border Patrol were making an arrest on Tryon Street in Charlotte. Onlookers filmed them, honked their horns, and yelled. As a passing driver slowed to film them, she screamed, “This is an illegal traffic stop!” Federal troops surrounded her car. At least two pointed their guns at her face. “Get the fuck back!” one shouted. 

The woman drove away unharmed, but the brazenness still astonishes me. 

It hit me then: They’re going to kill someone. Now they have. She was a mother of three, a poet, a singer. One friend told CNN that Good “was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.” 

But it’s not the first time federal immigration police have killed someone.  

The Trace, which reports on gun violence in America, is documenting ICE-involved shootings. Since January 2025, they’ve counted at least 14 people who’ve been shot by federal agents. At least four people have been killed. ICE and Border Patrol have also fired on nonviolent protesters. 

The difference between Good and those other ICE-involved deaths, of course, is this one is on camera. 

Most people will watch the violent footage of Good’s killing and see, if not an abuse of law enforcement power, an outright murder.  

But the Trump administration wasted no time in lying about the circumstances Wednesday, claiming Good used her vehicle as a weapon. They said one federal agent had to be hospitalized. 

Based on video footage from multiple angles, no federal agents were struck by Good’s car. The officer who shoots her isn’t in the path of her car when he fires point blank into it. He walks away from it appearing unharmed. 

If that wasn’t enough turmoil for one day, Border Patrol skirmished with high schoolers and educators at a local Minneapolis school Wednesday as students left for the day. As if troops with machine guns belong anywhere near our schools. 

Law enforcement has an enormous job. But this isn’t that. Whether you support Trump’s immigration crackdown or not, protesting it isn’t supposed to be dangerous. 

It isn’t Americans’ responsibility to not get murdered by federal soldiers working in our name. 

We expect our cops and deputies to defend themselves. Shooting point blank into the head of a person driving away isn’t that. At the very least, when our local police cross the line, they answer to someone. We’ve seen nothing of the sort with ICE and Border Patrol. Not yet, that is.

We’re not safer because of them. It’s obvious we might be killed by them for standing up to them. 

People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, near the site of the shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

Good’s killing, in its feckless use of violence, recalls the deputies who shot and killed Andrew Brown in Elizabeth City, NC, in 2021, a shooting that inspired a wave of protests in North Carolina. In that case, like this one, law enforcement shot and killed a person driving away. 

And while this week’s tragedy in Minneapolis felt inevitable, it wasn’t. Since Border Patrol and ICE began their Trump-empowered rampage in 2025, there have been numerous opportunities for the Trump administration—and the Republican political leaders in Washington who enable them—to demand a different path.

They, like us, have seen immigration agents’ rapid escalation of manpower and tactics, the way they’ve loosened hiring and training standards to grow fast enough. They’ve gutted the federal office that polices the federal agents who abuse their power. They’ve repeatedly claimed they’re targeting violent criminals, but even the most cursory review of the people they’re arresting finds the lie. 

The impunity, it staggers. 

Immigration policing doesn’t have to involve masked men carrying machine guns and driving unmarked cars. They don’t have to torment peaceful communities, treating our streets as if they’re in a video game or fighting insurgents in Fallujah. 

We want our federal agents to be the best of us. For all the world, they appear to be the worst. 

On Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz implored federal agents to “leave our state alone.” Walz spoke for many of us who’ve seen federal immigration agents’ work in our states and cities. 

Leave us alone.

 

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