ICE Agent Fatally Shoots Woman In Minneapolis: Live Updates |
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent opened fire on a car in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, killing the unarmed driver, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. Federal officials are alleging that the shooting, which was captured in multiple videos, was in self-defense, while local officials are disputing that and calling for ICE to leave the city. The incident comes amid a controversial surge of as many as 2,000 federal officers to Minneapolis as the Trump administration seeks to ramp up immigration enforcement there and across the state. Here’s what we know so far.
In an executive order on Thursday afternoon, the governor thanked Minnesotans for peacefully protesting in the aftermath of the shooting and said he expected that peace to continue. He said the state National Guard would be used, if needed, “only where local law enforcement resources have been exhausted.”
Aaron Blake goes through the polling at CNN:
To the extent Americans believe this was murder, it could epitomize a perceived overzealous heavy-handedness and contribute to the political unraveling of Trump’s often-militarized mass-deportation project, has been so central to the president’s second term.
Virtually every sign before Tuesday was that Americans were inclined toward the latter view – that ICE is too heavy-handed:
• Majorities have said ICE’s operations are “too tough” (53% in an October CBS News-YouGov poll) and that it has “gone too far” in enforcing immigration laws (54% in a June Marist College poll).
• Voters disapproved 57%-39% of how ICE was enforcing immigration laws in a July Quinnipiac University poll.
• In each case, about 6 in 10 independents sided against ICE.
• An August Pew Research Center poll showed ICE was the second-least-popular federal agency among 16 tested – edging out only the much-maligned Internal Revenue Service.
• Indeed, ICE actually appears to be more unpopular today than it was back in the late 2010s, when some liberals pushed to “abolish ICE.”
One of the more striking polls this summer came from CNN. As Trump and congressional Republicans were greatly expanding ICE funding in Trump’s big agenda bill – by billions of dollars – the survey showed Americans overwhelmingly opposed this additional funding 53%-31%.
That’s very unusual. Americans generally like the idea of expanding law enforcement funding, but not here – and decidedly so.
As I argue in my new post, they sure seem to:
Seen from 40,000 feet, the shooting and the entire set of controversies over ICE and its terroristic tactics represent the confluence of two issues Republicans think will invariably work in their favor: immigration and crime/policing. It’s true that immigration remains a relative bright spot for Trump among generally negative job-approval ratings. And the mass-deportation initiative that is ICE’s principal mission is very close to the heart of the MAGA movement. Meanwhile, the 2024 presidential campaign made it very clear Republicans believe that pandemic-era protests about police brutality (galvanized by the police murder of George Floyd less than a mile from where Renee Nicole Good had her own fatal encounter with law enforcement) have boomeranged and fed widespread public concerns about crime and disorder, real or just perceived. An associated “Back the Blue” movement is evident around the country, particularly in MAGA-land, and it’s entirely possible Republicans figure they can extend that presumption of police benevolence to ICE, hard as it might be to envision these armed and masked tormenters of immigrants as heroes.
More generally, Republicans may figure a national focus on ICE tactics wrong-foots Democrats, not only by reidentifying them with the phantom menace of “defunding the police” (with scattered Democratic calls for the total abolition of ICE contributing to that caricature) but by shifting the partisan battleground in the GOP’s direction. At present, Democratic politicians are being constantly hectored by consultants to put on blinders and ignore every issue other than “affordability.” In particular, they’ve been warned again and again not to “take Trump’s bait” by letting his rhetorical excesses (again on vivid display in his callous reaction to the Minneapolis shooting) distract them from obsessively talking about housing and grocery prices. The last week has been sheer torment for such Democrats between the Venezuela military strike and now the tragedy in Minnesota. A national debate on mass deportation and ICE tactics that spills over into disputes about the legitimacy of anti-ICE protests and general attitudes toward law enforcement is a nice distraction from Trump’s unpopular economic and foreign-policy agenda. And to the extent this debate remains focused on events in Minnesota, it keeps attention fixed on a blue state that Republicans would love to keep talking about, given the ongoing scandal over illegal pandemic-era spending in child-care programs linked to criminal immigrant networks of fraudsters.
Read the rest here.
At the Atlantic, Adam Serwer takes stock of the Trump administration’s instant smear campaign:
Administration officials’ indifference to facts, to due process, to the dignity of the deceased, and to basic human decency is remarkable. They could have pleaded for patience and said the incident would be investigated—the standard response in such circumstances. They could have even done so while defending the federal agents they have deployed to terrorize areas they perceive as Democratic Party enclaves. Instead, they proceeded to make ostentatiously dishonest statements that they knew would be contradicted by the video evidence available to anyone with eyes to see it. The federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public. Good’s mother, partner, and children have to cope not only with their unfathomable loss, but with a campaign designed to justify her killing. Their own lives will be subject to invasive scrutiny by the government and its allies, in a search for any derogatory information about Good that might somehow be used to justify her killing. For some, that won’t even be necessary. “I do not feel bad for the woman that was involved,” the Republican lawmaker Randy Fine told the right-wing network Newsmax. …
The blatant lies about Minneapolis serve several purposes. They perpetuate the false narrative that federal agents are in constant peril and therefore justified in using lethal force at the slightest hint of danger. They assure federal agents that they can harm or even kill American citizens with impunity, and warn those who might be moved to protest Trump’s immigration policies of the same thing. Perhaps most grim, they communicate to the public that if you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist.
At the Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last compares the death of Good with the death of Ashli Babbitt during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6:
The people who run this regime do not understand law enforcement as an institution to be stewarded. The view it as a tool for the domination of their enemies. And their “enemies” include about half of America.
Again: This is not hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is when someone holds to a set of values but applies them selectively. You can work with hypocrites because they share your values, even if they do not always adhere to them. Hypocrisy is, famously, the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
No, what we are seeing is a worldview for which the only value is the domination of enemies. There is a name for that. It is fascism.
In this worldview, Ashli Babbitt was committing violence on behalf of the regime; so she was justified, even if that violence was directed toward government agents. And because Renee Good was opposing the regime, violence against her—this time carried out by government agents—was likewise justified.
I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but this is not hypocrisy. It’s illiberalism.
The liberal view is that violence is not acceptable unless it is carried out by the state under strict sanction of the law. The illiberal view—the fascist view—is that violence is a tool for domination of the out-group.
That’s why Renee Good was killed.
Reports the Star Tribune:
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis Wednesday is Jonathan Ross, the same officer who was dragged and injured by a fleeing driver in a separate incident last year, according to a person with knowledge of the case and verified by court documents. Little public information is available about Ross, described only by federal officials as “an experienced” officer.
On Wednesday morning, Ross was embedded in a group of federal agents on a targeted crackdown in south Minneapolis when Renee Nicole Good was shot. ICE has not reported the identity of the shooter and did not respond to request for comment for this story.
A photo of Ross’s face has since circulated social media, as online sleuths have attempted to identify him. …
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday that the agent who killed Good was the same officer dragged by a suspect in Bloomington, Minn. last June. Although Ross was not named in the 13-page indictment of the driver, he is identified in several court records filed in the case, including photo exhibits from the hospital. He is also listed by name as a witness.
During a White House press conference, the vice president has been making all kinds of inflammatory claims, including accusing reporters of being “agents of propaganda,” alleging that Renee Good was “brainwashed” and responsible for her own death, misrepresenting what the video evidence shows, declaring that the ICE officer who killed Good “deserves a debt of gratitude,” and claiming that the activism against ICE is part of a vast left-wing plot. He also dismissed the idea that Minnesota state authorities should be allowed to investigate the shooting.
Some of his specific comments:
Vance: You see people who are eyewitnesses saying that she was there to engage in obstruction. How did she get there? How did she learn about this? There's an entire network and some of the media are participating in it trying to incite violence. pic.twitter.com/CbJ41Fw1MB
Vance: She is a victim of left-wing ideology. What young mother shows up and decides they are going to throw their car in front of I.C.E. Officers enforcing legitimate law? You have to be brainwashed to get to that point. pic.twitter.com/ozSujfuDZu
Vance: He deserves a debt of gratitude and I think the media prejudging and talking about this guy as if he is a murderer is one of the most disgraceful things I have seen from the American media. pic.twitter.com/wd4nxlzxZ4
JD Vance: "The idea that Tim Walz and a bunch of radical are gonna go after and make this guy's life miserable because he was doing the job he was asked to do is preposterous. The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can prosecute a federal official with........