An ICE agent shot lifeless Renée Nicole Good. Residents are able to struggle again.
Folks exhibit towards ICE throughout a vigil honoring Renée Nicole Good, who was shot lifeless by an immigration officer earlier within the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 7, 2026.
(Kerem Yucel / AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
Minneapolis—On the base of a barren tree in south Minneapolis, candles flickered within the night time. The vigil held for Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom and poet shot within the face by a federal agent yesterday morning, was over, however congregants remained. Some held flowers. Some warmed themselves by makeshift fireplace pits. Some cried. Close by within the snow, two phrases had been scrawled in pink: ICE KILLS.
“We haven’t seen a gathering this huge in our metropolis because the homicide of George Floyd,” Suleiman Adan, the deputy government director of CAIR Minnesota, stated of the vigil, which drew hundreds. Certainly, Good’s dying follows an sadly acquainted sample: Regulation enforcement makes use of deadly pressure, a video circulates, self-defense is claimed, protesters accumulate, calls for are made. In keeping with Minneapolis Metropolis Council member Robin Wonsley, the calls to motion are simple: ICE out of Minneapolis, justice for Renée.
“Her homicide shouldn’t be allowed to occur with none repercussions,” Wonsley informed me. “That shouldn’t be a nationwide normal.” The agent must be arrested, and there must be native management of the investigation. According to MPR, state investigators have already been ousted from the case, with the FBI serving as the only investigative unit.
Present Problem
Any investigation undertaken by the federal authorities will possible be a sham, Alex Vitale, writer of The End of Policing, added. “Of us ought to be attempting to provide their very own sense of justice,” he stated, citing the We Charge Genocide petition of the Nineteen Fifties, which aimed to carry police and mobs accountable for the killings of unarmed Black women and men. The US authorities has lengthy been reluctant to reckon with its violence.
Similtaneously the candlelight vigil held in Good’s honor, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS), held a press conference by which she dubbed Good a “home terrorist”—a label the administration more and more applies to anybody who disagrees with them. This morning, protesters gathered outdoors the Bishop Henry Whipple Constructing, which homes DHS, simply as they did for Noem’s visit in late October. On Monday alone, ICE brokers arrested 150 individuals in Minneapolis.
“The actual and consequential query is how far Minnesota officers are prepared to go to problem out-of-control federal regulation enforcement,” Stuart Schrader, writer of Badges Without Borders, stated. “Prosecutors ought to be convening a grand jury to indict the shooter, and state and native regulation enforcement or Nationwide Guard ought to be mobilized to cease ICE. If I had been Walz, I might cross the Rubicon.”
Coleen Fitzgerald, a protester dressed as a clown, considers an investigation the naked minimal. “I suppose burning on the stake isn’t an choice,” she stated.
Whereas Walz has the Nationwide Guard on standby, it’s unclear whether or not the goal could be to quell protests or to withstand ICE. At this morning’s protest, a row of masked ICE brokers pushed group members backward and threw smoke bombs into the gang. “Nazis!” individuals shouted. “ICE out now!”
“Minneapolis residents have time and time once more confirmed that we care deeply for each other,” Wonsley informed me. “Once we see a grave injustice occur, we are going to manage to guarantee that justice or accountability is rendered.”
Proper now, individuals are scared to easily reside their lives, she added. Some mother and father, Adnan famous, have sewn their kids’s passports inside their jackets. Though he’s a naturalized citizen, he has begun carrying his in every single place he goes.
“As individuals of religion, we imagine that God selected the individuals of Minneapolis to proceed the work that we began in 2020,” he stated. “The work was not executed then, and it’s not executed now.”
Trump’s crackdown is just not guided by analysis or logic, criminologist Charis Kubrin stated. “It’s guided by emotion, stereotype, and ethical panic” and lies on the intersection of damaging stereotypes primarily based on race and immigration standing.
Immigrants are certainly being scapegoated for issues born of runaway company greed, Vitale informed me. “Once we see an issue turned over to individuals with weapons to handle, we should always search for the political failing that’s being coated up,” he stated. The “theater of the strongman” is supposed to distract from the precise points at hand. “A whole lot of that is about overcoming a way of emasculation that quite a lot of the inhabitants is feeling within the face of runaway company energy,” he defined. “It’s producing this type of poisonous masculinity that’s in search of refuge within the trappings of army would possibly, whether or not it’s invading Venezuela or chasing Latin American housekeepers down the road in Minneapolis.”
Protests are essential, however “we additionally want organizing,” he stated. “There have been 10 years between the Montgomery bus boycott and the passage of actual civil rights laws. We have to assume in longer time horizons. However the underlying arguments that police are doing an excessive amount of, that reform is a distraction, these concepts have actually caught and have quite a lot of well-liked help.”
Widespread
“swipe left beneath to view extra authors”Swipe →
Even Mayor Jacob Frey, who was booed in 2020 for his refusal to help the defund motion, stated ICE ought to “get the fuck out” of Minneapolis.
Within the hours instantly following Good’s dying, yellow crime tape and steel barricades surrounded the scene. Protesters gathered on the perimeter and shouted at native police, who had been congregating casually close to their autos.
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” a protester shouted to a cop in riot gear. “Somebody was murdered.” Regardless of a not too long ago strengthened separation ordinance—which prohibits native police from imposing federal immigration regulation—the overarching feeling was that police had been defending ICE, not the individuals.
“It was a white girl who was killed!” a protester yelled at a lady in a bulletproof vest labeled FBI. “It may have been you!”
“If solely there was a poem about this,” somebody added.
As of this morning, the road remained barricaded, with fires burning at every finish. A crowd gathered across the memorial as a lady handed out samosas. In the meantime, outdoors Henry Whipple, a person fell to his knees within the snow after brokers threw a smoke bomb in his route. “I can’t breathe!” he stated. A medic poured water in his eyes as a swarm of journalists photographed the second. The scene was harking back to 2020, as is the sentiment surrounding it. In Adan’s phrases: “The world is watching.”
Extra from The Nation
The ICE agent who killed Renée Nicole Good not solely can be held accountable for homicide—he have to be.
The general public well being icon was brutally faraway from her job for one cause: her opposition to genocide in Gaza.
Can Trump and Kristi Noem preserve their blatant lies within the face of a number of movies that present the sufferer was attempting to drive away when she was shot thrice by an ICE agent?
Let’s bid farewell to the 12 months on a hopeful be aware and keep in mind the issues that went proper.
For army members, merely recognizing that you’ve got the authorized capability to do what’s proper isn’t any small factor.
