Opinion: ICE was always violent. The media just started paying attention. |
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Early January marked the first time in years that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s abuse of power shifted from a mostly ignored background issue to daily headlines. But it wasn’t because ICE suddenly became violent.
On Jan. 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old United States citizen and Minneapolis resident, was shot and killed in her car by an ICE agent. Less than two weeks after her murder, on Jan. 24, Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse and U.S. citizen, was tackled, shot and killed by ICE agents during an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis while trying to help a woman being attacked.
Both deaths are deeply tragic and have made a permanent impression on Americans. Our own citizens are being killed, reported as mere statistics in national headlines. American residents continue to endure, witness and, in many cases, directly experience conditions that resemble a dictator-run regime, a totalitarian community and a military-controlled society rather than a democracy.
This flood of coverage is more than understandable. American citizens are being killed by their own government’s federal agents on U.S. soil – it would be absurd for the nation not to pay attention. The intensity of this attention reveals something uncomfortable for Americans: The story only matters when white people are at the center of it.
Good and Pretti are only two of eight people who have died at the........