Trump administration uses ICE shooting to threaten political retaliation

A day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot a Minneapolis mother dead, the Trump administration has moved swiftly to portray the victim as a domestic terrorist and to threaten retaliation against unspecified left-wing groups.

The aggressive rhetoric represents the administration’s latest attempt to pin acts of violence, both real and exaggerated, on political opponents and use them to intensify its crackdown on dissent.

From the White House podium Thursday, Vice President JD Vance characterized the victim of the shooting — a 37-year-old mother of three identified as Renee Nicole Good — as a member of “a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”

He offered no evidence for that claim.

“This is classic terrorism,” Vance said. “We’re not going to give into terrorism on this.”

In reality, Good had just dropped her six-year-old son off at school Wednesday when she crossed paths with one of the Trump administration’s many aggressive immigration raids, her ex-husband told MPR News.

He described Good as a devout Christian and poet who loved to sing. He also said he had never known her to participate in protests.

Trump’s distortion of Good’s killing

While the exact sequence of events that left Good dead from three gunshots remains disputed, footage of the incident strongly contradicts the Trump administration’s narrative. 

According to multiple videos of the incident, several masked ICE agents exited a vehicle, approached Good’s SUV, and ordered her to get out. After briefly backing up, Good turned her wheels to the right and began accelerating as an officer standing to the left of her front bumper brandished a gun and fired three shots, once through Good’s front windshield and twice at close range through her open driver-side window.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initially asserted that Good “weaponized her vehicle” and committed an “act of domestic terrorism” by attempting to run law enforcement officials over. The officer who shot Good feared for his life and the life of his fellow officers and acted defensively, DHS claimed.

However, nothing in the footage or statements from eye-witnesses indicates that Good attempted to run any of the agents down. Rather, it appeared that she was attempting to drive away from the officers.

Wednesday afternoon, Trump went on the attack.

“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” he wrote on Truth Social. 

Trump said it was “hard to believe” the ICE officer was alive — despite video showing he remained on his feet throughout the incident and was filmed walking around after the shooting.

Tragedy for political gain

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has used a tragic shooting to promote a crackdown on the president’s political opponents.

Rather, its statements against Good echo the claims it made after a lone gunman fatally shot  conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last year.

After Kirk’s killing, Vance vowed that the federal government would investigate and dismantle left-leaning non-profits that he claimed fund and promote violence in the U.S.

Soon thereafter, Trump also signed two executive orders targeting antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist movement that the Trump administration has claimed is an organized terrorist organization operating within the U.S.

Several legal and national security experts have warned that Trump and his allies may attempt to use the orders to criminalize opposition to administration policies by portraying it as domestic terrorism. They also suggested the orders could be used to create a pretext to target people or organizations that support progressive causes.

Following that logic, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Wednesday night asserted that Good was a participant in a vast domestic terrorism plot to kill immigration officials with vehicles. Despite offering no evidence, she claimed that people were being trained and directed to run over agents.

“This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement is going to stop,” Noem claimed. “And I’m asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism, because it’s clear it’s being coordinated.”

When asked Thursday whether he could identify who was behind the network he alleged Good was part of, Vance alluded to an ongoing investigation by the DOJ.

“That’s one of the things we’re gonna have to figure out,” Vance said before claiming that certain members of the media were “participants” in the network.

Vance, who is widely viewed as the heir to Trump’s MAGA movement, also implied that elected Democrats were part of the conspiracy “by rallying the mob against legitimate law enforcement operations.”

DOJ freezes Minnesota from Good probe

While Trump officials made their unsubstantiated claims, the FBI shut out state and municipal authorities from investigating the killing.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said in a statement Thursday that it was notified by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that it would no longer have “access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation” into the shooting. 

The move, BCA noted, was a reversal. In the immediate hours following the shooting, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota, the FBI and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office decided “that the BCA Force Investigations Unit would conduct a joint investigation with the FBI.”

“The BCA responded promptly to the scene and began coordinating investigative work in good faith,” the Minnesota investigative agency said.
The FBI froze out state investigators after Daniel Rosen, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, became aware that the bureau was cooperating with local police and intervened, according to independent journalist Radley Balko.

DHS’s track record of suspect claims

This wasn’t the first time the Trump administration made claims about a police-involved shooting that were later refuted.

After a Border Patrol officer shot a woman in Chicago five times in October, DHS initially accused her of “ambushing” police and ramming her vehicle into the officer’s vehicle while tailing an immigration operation in the city.

The woman, Marimar Martinez, was charged with assault. However, evidence produced in court proceedings indicated that the officer was responsible for the crash and that he may have attempted to destroy evidence by driving his vehicle to Maine and having it repaired.

Proceedings also revealed that the officer, Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum, later bragged about shooting Martinez.

“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys,” he said in a text to his fellow officers.

The DOJ later dropped its case against Martinez.