The death of an apparently innocent woman at the hands of immigration police does no favors to the split plaguing American society
Is it becoming impossible to protest the US government as specifically protected by the First Amendment without being branded a domestic terrorist, or worse, killed? That is what many fear is happening following the violent death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a stay-at-home mother of three, in the US city of Minneapolis.
On January 7, Good was blocking a neighborhood street inside of her SUV before being approached by two ICE agents. The video shows one of the officers jostling with the door handle, demanding that the woman get out of the vehicle. Instead of exiting the car, Good went briefly in reverse and then lurched forward in an apparent attempt to flee the scene. At this point, another officer, identified as Jonathan Ross, drew his revolver and fired two bullets into the windshield of the moving SUV, striking Good in the head. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
At this point, nothing makes sense about this ‘police stop,’ which wasn’t your typical police stop at all. As is clearly seen in the video, the first officer does not attempt to speak to the woman to understand why her car is parked sideways on the road. Perhaps she is having car problems, we don’t know and, apparently, he doesn’t either (media has since confirmed that Good belonged to a group called ‘ICE Watch,’ a loose group of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city). Instead, he grabs the door handle while hollering at the woman to get out of the car. As anybody who has been through a police stop knows, that is not how they are supposed to work. People are usually terrified when getting confronted by the police, thus it is essential that the officer make some sort of communication with the driver, asking for a driver’s license and registration as the most obvious way. Under normal circumstances, the officer will go back to his vehicle to check the information.
Meanwhile, the woman was, to say the least, unwise to attempt to flee from a federal officer. The best thing she could have done was to comply with the officer and get out of the vehicle and then get in touch with a lawyer. With that said, however, it did not appear that the woman had any intention to run over the officers. It appears that her intention was to flee arrest, which does not warrant lethal force on the part of the police. While it’s easy to play ‘Monday morning quarterback,’ it appears that the second officer, who was standing in front of the vehicle, was not in any danger of being run over. Judging by the video, the SUV had already passed by him before he fired two shots at the driver.
What is unfortunate about all of this is that the Trump administration – and Trump himself – wasted no time pinning blame on the driver of the car. Worse, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, portrayed the victim, a mother of three and award-winning poet, as a “domestic terrorist.” Good, Noem said without providing any evidence, had been “stalking and impeding” ICE officers before “weaponizing her vehicle” in an effort to run over the agent who shot her.
The game of victim-blaming did not end there. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and a spokesperson for ICE, declared in a post on X that “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them – an act of domestic terrorism.”
Several ICE officers were injured, she insisted, when videos of the shooting proved that claim to be categorically false.
This is a very dark day in America when average citizens – soccer moms no less – are declared “domestic terrorists” before any investigation into their ‘crimes’ has even started. The dead mother was not engaged in violent protesting, unless we have reached the point when blocking traffic with one’s automobile can be considered a terrorist act worthy of losing one’s life over. That’s why it’s crucial to wait for an in-depth investigation before jumping to conclusions. What is disturbing, however, is the way officials were tossing around explosive phrases, like “rioter,”“domestic terrorist,” and “weaponizing a vehicle” less than 24 hours after the killing took place.
If that middle-aged mother can be described in such a way, then every neighborhood in the US is teeming with “domestic terrorists,” just waiting to run over police officers with their SUVs. While it is necessary for ICE to do their thankless job of removing unwanted illegal immigrants, it is equally essential that they do so without branding your average suburban mothers as potential terrorists. The Trump authorities have to understand by now that their work is viewed as highly suspect by many Americans, mostly on the left of the political spectrum, and that emotions are off the charts.
The fact is, Renee Nicole Good was not a “domestic terrorist” by any stretch of the imagination, and to suggest that she was undermines all of the liberties that Americans have fought for over the years, including the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom to address the government for perceived wrongs. Unless Americans can protest controversial activities by their government without fear of being killed, the notion that America is a country of laws will exist as simply the greatest fiction.
