Why are federal agents gunning down Americans in the streets?

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

“What if you knew her and/ Found her dead on the ground/ How can you run when you know”
          — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

I am neither a forensic expert nor a jury member, but it sure looks to me like an ICE agent shot and killed a woman who wasn’t threatening his life. We have video of  the killing of Renee Good  in Minneapolis on January 7th, and the Washington Post has  a detailed blow-by-blow analysis  of the video:

In the aftermath [of the killing], Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said [Renee Good] had committed an act of “domestic terrorism,” first disobeying officers’ commands and then weaponizing her SUV by attempting to “run a law enforcement officer over.” President Donald Trump said the woman “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”

A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him…

The agent…can be seen standing behind Good’s SUV…The agent then walks around the passenger side…[T]wo additional agents…approach Good…A voice can be heard saying to “get out” of the car at least two times. One of the agents puts a hand on the opening of the driver’s side window and with his other hand tugs twice quickly on the door handle, but the driver’s door does not open…[T]he SUV begins to back up…

The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle…The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street…As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.

For more details surrounding the incident, and for the full video, check out  the Washington Post article . Here’s a frame-by-frame analysis by Bellingcat:

Here’s another link  where you can see videos of the incident from three different angles.  Here’s a good post  analyzing the videos in detail.

It’s not clear whether Good meant to hit the ICE agent with her car, or meant to threaten to hit him, when she briefly pulled forward before driving away. Nor is it clear why Good was interacting with the agents in the first place. What  does  seem clear is that when the agent fired his second and third shots at Good, he was standing  to the side  of her car, and thus was not directly threatened by the car. Cars cannot drive sideways.

Again, I’m not a jury member, but my understanding of the law is that if you’re not defending yourself from a threat, you’re not allowed to kill someone. It’s possible that the agent — now identified as  Jonathan Ross  — fired those second and third shots at Good  in retaliation  for a threat on his life  that had already passed . (The first shot was fired from diagonally in front of the car, where it  might  have been possible for Good to hit Ross.)

That’s just about the most charitable interpretation possible. But if someone threatens you and then runs away, you’re not allowed to shoot them in the back as they run. That’s not self defense.

And of course, there are more uncharitable interpretations here. It’s possible Ross shot Good on a pretext of self defense, because he was simply angry at her for refusing his demands to open the car door, or because she was trying to film him. One of the ICE officers can be heard yelling a vulgar insult at Good. 1

Under normal circumstances, I suppose Ross might be prosecuted for manslaughter or something like that. But ICE has been heavily politicized, and so the Trump administration  leapt doggedly to Ross’ defense . Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security called Good a “terrorist”, and Trump, lying as usual, said that Good had “run over the ICE officer”. But it’s Vice President JD Vance who has been the most dogged and vociferous in his  defense of Ross  and  vilification of Renee Good :

The Vice President’s claim that the shots were fired from the front of the car is pretty clearly false. He also repeatedly  talked about ICE agents  “ going door to door ” to deport illegal immigrants — pretty clearly ignoring the Constitution’s  Fourth Amendment , which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures”.

Vance’s reception on social media — even from the kind of  “tech right” types  that are usually his fans — was largely  negative . Here’s a fairly representative  tweet :

That mirrors the overall mood in the country.  Here’s Axios , two days after the killing in Minnesota:

Americans now disapprove of  ICE  and support  protests  against the agency, according to a new  poll  conducted the same day a federal officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis…A  YouGov  poll of over 2,600 U.S. adults on Jan. 7, found people don’t like the way ICE operates…About 52% either somewhat or strongly disapproved of how ICE was handling its job, compared to 39% who somewhat or strongly approved…Just 27% said the agency’s tactics were “about right” compared to 51% who called them “too forceful”. Another 10% said they were “not forceful enough.”…A 44% plurality of adults approved of recent ICE protests, while 42% disapproved…ICE had a +16 net approval rating last February at the start of Trump’s second term,  according  to YouGov…That rating cratered over the year to -14[.]

Two days is probably far too early for the killing of Good to have shifted national opinion radically. The negative drift in views toward ICE is probably due to their consistent record of brutality, aggression, dubious legality, and unprofessionalism in Trump’s second term.

Here’s a video  of ICE agents in Arkansas beating up an unarmed U.S. citizen.  Here’s a video  of ICE agents arresting two U.S. citizens in a Target.  Here’s a story  about a similar arrest.  Here’s a video  of an ICE agent brandishing a gun in the face of a protester.  Here’s the story  of ICE agents arresting a pastor who complained about an arrest he saw.  Here’s a video  of ICE agents arresting an American citizen and punching him repeatedly.  Here’s a video  of ICE agents threatening a bystander who complained about their reckless driving.  Here’s a video  of ICE agents arresting a man for yelling at them from his own front porch.  Here’s a video  of ICE agents making a particularly brutal arrest while pointing their weapons at unarmed civilians nearby.  Here’s a story  about another ICE killing, this one in Maryland, under dubious circumstances.

These are all things I noticed on X within just the last two days. There has been a pretty constant stream of these for months. Here’s  a roundup  of some others, by Jeremiah Johnson:

For the past year, ICE has been involved in a series of escalating incidents that rarely result in repercussions for anyone involved. ICE agents have recklessly caused traffic accidents and then, in one incident,  arrested the person whose car they hit . They’ve tear-gassed a veteran, arrested him, and  denied him access to medical care and an attorney . They have  attacked protesters  merely for filming them in public. They’ve pepper-sprayed  a fleeing onlooker in the eyes  from a foot away. They’ve  pointed guns at a 6-year-old . They’ve  knelt on top of a pregnant woman  while they arrested her. They have arrested another pregnant woman, then  kept her separated from her newborn  while she languished in custody. They have repeatedly  arrested American citizens , and they’ve even reportedly  deported a citizen , directly contradicting court orders.

These are anecdotes, but there have also been careful, systematic reports about  ICE arrests and mistreatment of U.S. citizens  and  poor conditions in ICE detention centers .

The  Wall Street Journal  also  reviewed some other videos  and other records of ICE shootings, and found a similar pattern to the Renee Good killing:

The Wall Street Journal has identified 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles since July, leaving at least eight people shot with two confirmed dead…The Journal reviewed public records—court documents, agency press releases and gun-violence databases—of vehicle shootings involving immigration agents, though video is only publicly available for four of them…The Minneapolis shooting shares characteristics with others the Journal reviewed: Agents box in a vehicle, try to remove an individual, block attempts to flee, then fire.

Instead of causing ICE agents to pause in consternation, the killing of Renee Good appears to have made many even more aggressive.  Here’s a video  of an ICE agent in Minnesota telling a protester “Have y’all not learned from the past coupla days?”.  Here’s a video  of an ICE agent kicking over candles at a memorial for Renee Good.

Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the  ultra-low standards  for recruitment and training of ICE agents under Trump:

A  deadly shooting in Minneapolis  at the hands of a federal immigration officer comes weeks after a  bombshell report  on President Donald Trump’s desperate drive to  rush 10,000 deportation officers  onto the payroll by the end of 2025. The explosive Daily Mail report found that the administration's $50,000 signing bonus  attracted droves  of unqualified recruits — high school grads who can "barely read or write," overweight candidates with doctor's notes saying they're unfit, and even applicants with pending criminal charges…[O]ne Department of Homeland Security official [said]: "We have people failing open-book tests and we have folks that can barely read or write English."

Jeremiah Johnson  has more :

Reporting shows that ICE is filled with substandard agents. Its aggressive push to hire more agents uses charged rhetoric that  appeals to far-right groups , but the agency has run into problems with recruits  unable to pass background checks  or meet minimum standards for academic background,  personal fitness , or  drug usage . One career ICE agent called new recruits “pathetic,” according to  The Atlantic , and a current Department of Homeland Security official  told  NBC News that “There is absolutely concern that some people are slipping through the cracks,” and being inadvertently hired.

It’s worth noting, though, that  Jonathan Ross himself is well-trained , with plenty of experience in law enforcement and military combat operations. So it’s not always a matter of poor training.

A number of Republican politicians have defended ICE’s actions with rhetoric that sounds downright authoritarian. Texas Representative  Wesley Hunt said : “The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.” Florida Representative  Randy Fine said : “If you get in the way of the government repelling a foreign invasion, you’re going to end up just like that lady did.”

Is this America now? A country where unaccountable and poorly trained government agents go door to door, arresting and beating people on pure suspicion, and shooting people who don’t obey their every order or who try to get away? “When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life” is a perfect description of an authoritarian police state. None of this is Constitutional, every bit of it is deeply antithetical to the American values we grew up taking for granted.

Why is this happening? Part of it is because of the mistakes of the Biden administration. For the first three years of his presidency, Biden allowed a massive, disorderly flood of border-hopping asylum seekers and quasi-legal migrants of all types to pour into the country, and as a result,  Americans got really, really mad . That made immigration into a major issue in the 2024 election, helped Trump get elected, and provided political cover for a dramatic expansion of deportations. Now, probably thanks to ICE’s brutality and the administration’s lawlessness, support for immigrants and disapproval of Trump’s immigration policies are  rising again . But the administration still has what it considers a mandate to act with impunity.

The deeper reason, though, is the ideology of the MAGA movement. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most Trump supporters view immigration as a literal invasion of the United States — not a figurative “invasion”, but a literal attempted conquest of America by foreigners. This is from  an Ipsos poll  in early 2025:

Source:  NPR/Ipsos

And a substantial percentage of these folks believe that the purpose of this “invasion” is to “replace” the existing American population. This is from  a PRRI poll from late 2024 :

One-third of Americans (33%) agree with the “Great Replacement Theory,” or the idea that immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background. The majority of Americans (62%) disagree with this theory. Agreement with this theory has decreased by 3 percentage points from 36% in 2019…Six in ten Republicans (60%) agree with the “Great Replacement Theory,” compared with 30% of independents and 14% of Democrats. Among Republicans, those who hold a favorable view of Trump are more likely than those who hold an unfavorable view to agree that immigrants are invading our country (68% vs. 32%).

Perhaps some think that this “Great Replacement” is only cultural or  partisan/political  — the DHS recruits agents with a call to “ Defend your culture! ” — but many clearly think it’s racial in nature. The DHS recently  posted this image :

100 million is  far  more than the total number of immigrants in the United States (which is  estimated at around 52 million ). Instead, it’s close to  the total number of nonwhite people in the country . So the idea of “100 million deportations” clearly goes well beyond the idea of deporting illegal immigrants, and well beyond the idea of deporting  all  immigrants, into the territory of ethnic cleansing.

The DHS is posting these memes as a recruitment tactic, and polls about the “Great Replacement” show that there’s a large pool of potential recruits to whom this rhetoric is likely to appeal. In other words, many of the ICE agents now going around kicking in doors, beating up and threatening protesters, arresting citizens on pure suspicion, and occasionally shooting people believe that  they are engaged in a race war . Many of them probably agree with  Elon Musk’s assessment  that White people have to maintain demographic dominance in order to avoid becoming an oppressed minority:

Musk is obviously thinking of his native South Africa. But this kind of politics is now commonplace in the United States as well. Observers of right-wing politics in America have  noted the rise  of sentiments like this. This hatred is likely fueling the brutality that ICE is displaying in the streets.

To be fair, the Great Replacement ideology didn’t arise out of nowhere. It’s an irrational and panicky overreaction that will lead America down the road to disaster — it’s  full of hate and lies , it’s inherently divisive, it’s associated with some of history’s most horrible regimes, and it’s being promoted by some very bad actors. But it has also been egged on by a progressive movement that has made  anti-white discrimination in hiring  a pillar of its approach to racial equity, and has  normalized anti-white rhetoric  in the public sphere. This was an unforced error by the left —  one of many  over the past decade.

But whoever started America’s stupid race war, the real question is who will stand up and end it. The GOP, and the MAGA movement specifically, was offered a golden off-ramp from this dark path. In 2020 and 2024, Hispanic Americans, along with some Asian and Black Americans,  shifted strongly toward Trump and the GOP . This was a perfect opportunity for the GOP to make itself, in  the words of Marco Rubio , a “multiracial working-class” party. This would have been similar to how Nixon and Reagan expanded the GOP coalition to include “white ethnics” that the GOP had spurned in the early 20th century. But instead, MAGA took the victory handed to them by nonwhite voters and used it to act like exactly the kind of white-nationalist race warriors that liberals had always insisted they were.

I doubt that Donald Trump himself thinks of his administration as prosecuting a race war. He is certainly a nativist — he  disdains immigrants from countries like Somalia , and believes that they’re “poisoning the blood of our country” — but at the same time he accepts America’s basic status as a multiracial nation. He has  targeted  many of his  appeals  toward  Black  and  Hispanic  voters,  arguing  that they, too, are threatened by waves of illegal immigrants and refugees from poor countries.

But Trump is an old man, and the younger generation was raised not on mid-20th-century nationalist rhetoric but on right-wing social media and memes. When Trump is gone, the MAGA movement will cease to be defined by his personal charisma, and  will start being defined by the ideology  of the Great Replacement — the same ideology that is now motivating many of the ICE agents acting like thugs in the streets of America.

And it’s increasingly clear that JD Vance, understanding that he lacks Trump’s cult of personality, has decided to make himself the leader, voice, and avatar of the “Great Replacement” movement — even if this arouses the disgust of many traditional conservatives and some figures in the tech right. With the disarray of the Democrats and the weakness of other GOP factions, Vance’s move may be a smart political bet, even if it comes at the expense of American freedom and stability.

The only thing left for America to do now is to fight against this ideology. There is no future for a country that declares a third of its people to be illegitimate, and which deploys authoritarian force to intimidate and expel as many of them as possible. Instead, Americans have to insist that the Trump administration stop these abuses, and they have to vote against any politician who embraces the ideology that led to them. Otherwise, events like the killing of Renee Good are likely to become a normal occurrence.