Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity
On 7 January 2026, Renee Good was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross; video captures a man’s voice calling her a “fucking bitch” afterwards. Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, maligned Good as having committed “domestic terrorism”. Good’s killing became a national flashpoint as protests erupted demanding justice for the mother of three.
Good’s killing is no anomaly. A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed 13 instances of ICE firing into civilian vehicles since July 2025, with at least eight people shot and two killed. ICE detentions are notorious for their inhumane conditions; 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025 alone, matching a record set two decades prior in 2004.
That a white woman can be killed on camera, with impunity, and be demeaned and ridiculed in her death for standing up for her neighbors shows just how far down the road of violence the nation has gone.
It is a road most Americans do not want to continue on – recent polling shows the majority disapprove of how ICE operates. But to truly stop the damage requires going further – it means eradicating the security logic that ever made people think that arming a secret police on an ethnic cleansing mission could ever make them safe.
Formed in 2003, during the embarrassing and disastrous national excesses of the post-9/11........
