Minneapolis and Minnesota authorities can’t let the Trump regime suppress the truth.
by Ryan CooperJanuary 12, 2026 (Prospect.org)
By now, most readers have probably seen the horrifying video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, to death. Of all the forensic analyses published, the best one I’ve seen thus far is this one from The New York Times. To my mind, it shows quite clearly that Good was attempting to drive away from the officers, and Ross shooting two out of three shots from a perpendicular position—totally outside of the car’s line of travel—into the driver’s-side window at point-blank range. He never even bothered to put away his cellphone, which was recording the whole time. That cellphone footage was apparently published on Friday, in which Good is seen saying “I’m not mad at you” to Ross just seconds before the shooting, and he calls her a “fucking bitch” after blowing her brains out.
It should be assumed that a cover-up conspiracy is in the works at the highest level. Just listen to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem spew some of the most heinous lies in the history of this administration—and that is saying something—calling a young mother with a glove box full of blood-splattered stuffed animals a “trained” “domestic terrorist” who maliciously attempted to run over ICE agents whose car had gotten stuck in the snow. Vice President Vance claimed, falsely, that all federal law enforcement officers have “absolute immunity” (just like in a police state). The FBI has already stepped in to take control of the investigation—refusing to cooperate with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and seizing Good’s car, the shell casings, and other critical evidence.
But that shouldn’t be the end of the story. It is critically important that state and local authorities do all in their power to conduct their own investigation, and bring Ross to trial.
If the above video analysis is correct, law and legal precedent seem to be quite clear. Law enforcement officers are not allowed to kill ordinary civilians to stop them from fleeing. According to the Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner, officers cannot use deadly force “unless it is necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
In particular, as a DHS official told NBC News, ICE officers are trained never to approach a car from the front, as Ross did, and not to shoot at a moving vehicle. This is standard practice for all police departments these days, for obvious reasons. Killing a driver is a not a reliable way to stop a vehicle, and in fact might make it more dangerous—which is exactly what happened in this case. After Ross shot Good, she slumped onto the accelerator pedal, and the car careened down the street and crashed into another car and a utility pole. There were bystanders all over both sides of the road; it’s a miracle nobody was run over or hit by a stray bullet as Ross blasted away with no evident regard for the people directly in his line of fire on the other side of the street.
As my colleague David Dayen wrote last week, despite the “qualified immunity” doctrine that was made up out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court, federal law enforcement officers are not immune from prosecution by state and local authorities, and there have been many cases of that happening. (Two House Democrats have filed legislation to strip qualified immunity from ICE agents, but even they acknowledge that states can criminally prosecute federal officers regardless.)
There is also more than enough evidence to bring Ross in. Indeed, this homicide is probably in the top 0.1 percent of most-documented alleged crimes just in terms of publicly available evidence. There are at least four different video recordings of the incident already published, with a clear view of the critical moment in which Ross fired into the vehicle as it passed by him, and numerous eyewitnesses who could be interviewed. That’s more than enough to clear any bar of reasonable doubt. With some subpoenas, a great deal more could likely be obtained.
It would no doubt be quite difficult to carry out such an investigation with an actively hostile FBI and a U.S. attorney who has apparently barred cooperation with state and local law enforcement. Without the car, gun, and shell casings in particular, it may be difficult to go through the usual court procedures to establish a baseline of what happened. But every attempt still must be made.
To their credit, it does seem like some of the relevant authorities are on the right track. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison have announced a joint effort to collect and preserve evidence of what happened, clearly with an eye to doing their own investigation.
Elsewhere, David Seligman, who is running for attorney general in Colorado, has promised to put together an ICE Accountability Unit that would prosecute agents who violate the law. The need for accountability is becoming a campaign issue.
Just prior to the writing of this article, more immigration enforcement officers—this time from Customs and Border Protection—shot two more people in Portland, Oregon, luckily not fatally this time. If the first year of Trump’s second term has proved anything, it is that America’s system of immigration enforcement is utterly beyond saving, with a deeply entrenched culture of lawless brutality. ICE and CBP should be scrapped, and the whole immigration system rebuilt from the ground up. Those demands are only going to grow in the wake of incidents like this carried out by a lawless paramilitary force.
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With gratitude,
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs. More by Ryan Cooper