Analysis of: Renee Nicole Good shooting casts scrutiny on ICE’s use of deadly force
The Guardian | January 10, 2026
The killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis reveals the structural impunity enjoyed by federal law enforcement agencies tasked with immigration enforcement. Despite video evidence suggesting Good was fleeing rather than attacking officers, and despite DHS policies explicitly prohibiting lethal force against fleeing individuals, the federal government has already moved to shield the agent from consequences. This case exposes a fundamental contradiction: agencies nominally bound by use-of-force policies operate with near-total immunity from those same policies. The incident must be understood within the material context of an intensified immigration crackdown serving specific class interests. ICE's 16 shootings under the current administration represent not isolated incidents but a pattern of violence accompanying policies designed to discipline and terrorize working-class immigrant communities. The victim—a 37-year-old mother of three who was a US citizen—demonstrates how this violence extends beyond its stated targets. The federal government's refusal to cooperate with local law enforcement, combined with administrative officials publicly exonerating the agent before investigation, reveals how state institutions protect their own enforcement apparatus. The secrecy surrounding ICE's use-of-force policies—with 13-page documents redacted to two sentences—exemplifies how the security state operates beyond democratic accountability. The FBI's decision to limit cooperation with local authorities who might file charges illustrates how federal power supersedes local jurisdiction when protecting agents of state violence. Good's family faces the limited remedy of civil litigation, highlighting how the legal system offers financial compensation as a substitute for genuine accountability, leaving the structural conditions that produced her death intact.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Federal immigration enforcement agents (ICE), Working-class individuals targeted by immigration enforcement, Trump administration officials, Local elected officials, Legal experts and civil rights advocates, FBI as investigative body
Beneficiaries: Federal law enforcement agencies seeking expanded powers, Political actors using immigration crackdowns to consolidate support, Employers benefiting from a terrorized, deportable workforce, Private detention and enforcement contractors
Harmed Parties: Working-class immigrant communities, US citizens caught in enforcement operations, Families separated or destroyed by enforcement violence, Communities facing militarized policing without recourse
The federal security apparatus holds overwhelming power, operating with minimal oversight and broad immunity. Local authorities—ostensibly with jurisdiction over homicides—are effectively subordinated to federal power when enforcement agents face potential prosecution. The individual victim and her family have access only to civil remedies, which cannot restore life or fundamentally alter the power imbalance. Political leaders at the federal level actively intervene to prejudge investigations, demonstrating that the executive branch views enforcement violence as a political asset rather than a liability.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Labor market control through immigration enforcement, Political economy of the carceral-immigration complex, Federal resource allocation toward enforcement expansion, Costs of civil litigation versus systemic reform
Immigration enforcement serves capital by maintaining a stratified labor market where undocumented workers exist as a hyper-exploitable underclass. The threat of enforcement disciplines both documented and undocumented workers, suppressing wages and organizing. The enforcement apparatus itself represents a significant sector of public employment and private contracting, creating material interests in continued expansion of immigration policing.
Resources at Stake: Federal funding for immigration enforcement agencies, Political capital derived from enforcement spectacles, Legal precedents regarding federal agent immunity, Local versus federal jurisdictional authority
Historical Context
Precedents: Long history of federal law enforcement violence with impunity, Border Patrol shootings rarely resulting in prosecution, Qualified immunity doctrine protecting state violence, 2025 marked as ICE's deadliest year in two decades, Historical pattern of immigration enforcement terrorizing communities
This incident fits within a longstanding pattern where state violence against marginalized populations operates with structural impunity. From slave patrols to strikebreaking to COINTELPRO to contemporary immigration enforcement, the American state has consistently deployed violence against working-class and racialized communities while shielding its agents from accountability. The post-2001 expansion of the security state under DHS created new bureaucratic layers insulating enforcement from democratic oversight, continuing a trajectory of concentrating coercive power in the executive branch.
Contradictions
Primary: The state publicly proclaims adherence to de-escalation policies and use-of-force guidelines while structurally protecting agents who violate these policies, revealing that the policies serve a legitimation function rather than operational constraint.
Secondary: Federal authorities claim to investigate impartially while political leaders publicly exonerate agents before investigation concludes, ICE claims authority to stop US citizens while acknowledging its deportation officers don't enforce traffic laws or typically target citizens, The legal system offers civil remedies as accountability while denying criminal prosecution that would create deterrence
These contradictions are unlikely to resolve through institutional channels, as the federal government has demonstrated commitment to protecting enforcement prerogatives. Escalating community resistance and potential sanctuary policies may intensify conflict between federal and local authorities. The contradiction between stated policy and actual practice may deepen as enforcement violence continues, potentially generating broader political opposition or, alternatively, further normalization of state violence.
Global Interconnections
This incident connects to global patterns of intensifying immigration enforcement across capitalist nations facing economic instability and demographic shifts. As capital becomes more mobile while borders discipline labor, enforcement violence serves a global function of maintaining unequal labor markets. The Trump administration's approach mirrors authoritarian governance trends internationally, where executive power expands at the expense of legal constraints and democratic accountability. The case also illustrates how domestic security apparatuses developed for external threats increasingly target internal populations. The militarization of immigration enforcement, borrowed from counterterrorism frameworks, represents the importation of colonial and imperial violence into the metropolitan core—a dynamic observable across Western nations as they manage migration produced by global economic inequality their own policies helped create.
Conclusion
The killing of Renee Nicole Good demonstrates that legal frameworks, policy guidelines, and formal oversight mechanisms provide insufficient protection against state violence when political imperatives favor enforcement expansion. For working-class communities—particularly those racialized as immigrant regardless of actual citizenship—this represents a material threat that cannot be addressed through appeals to existing institutions designed to protect those institutions' own agents. The path forward requires building power outside these structures: community defense networks, solidarity across citizenship status, and political organization that challenges the fundamental premises of immigration enforcement as a tool of labor discipline and racial control. The contradiction between the state's legitimation narratives and its actual violence creates openings for consciousness-raising, but only sustained organizing can transform that awareness into material change.
Editorial Note: This analysis applies a dialectical materialist framework to news events. It represents one interpretive perspective and should not be considered objective reporting.
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