Hi everyone-
A woman was killed on Wednesday in an altercation with ICE in Minneapolis. She sat in her Honda Pilot, with Missouri plates, and blocked the road while her wife stood outside the car in the cold, taking video of the whole thing on her cell phone.
The woman in the car was told by agents to stop, but she would not. Instead, she put the car in reverse while an ICE agent had his hand on her door handle and another was in front of the car. Then she gunned it forward only for the agent in front of the vehicle to fire into the windshield as he tried to get out of the way.
Renee Nicole Good lost her life trying to run over an ICE agent. The car sped off and crashed into a row of parked cars, Good slumped over behind the wheel. Emergency services were called. Witnesses stood around. Good's 6-year-old son was orphaned, his father having passed in 2023. And it's a tragedy that didn't have to happen.
There was no reason that Good should be in the street blocking law enforcement, nor that she would not comply with law enforcement when they told her to get out of the car. But she was an activist, spending her day protesting ICE agents, and her goal was to block their efforts to apprehend illegal immigrant criminals.
Minneapolis city officials said during a press conference that Good was blocking traffic intentionally, and that her intention was to prevent ICE agents from doing their job. Governor Tim Walz went out there in front of the cameras and told Minnesotans that getting out and protesting was their "patriotic duty," and he said to do so peacefully. He practically begged them not to give Renee Nicole Good the George Floyd treatment burn down the city.
Walz was joined by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey who told the feds to stay out of Minnesota. Frey, went further, saying "get the f*ck out" of Minneapolis. He said outright that the agent did not act in self-defense, despite the investigation only being an hour old at the time of his statements.
Others jumped on that bandwagon, like Ilhan Omar who said it was a "lie" that Good tried to "run the officer over" and told feds to "get out of our city." AOC said it was "murder." Rashida Tlaib, Sara Jacobs, and others all called for the arrest of the ICE agent who fired his weapon so they could give him the Derek Chauvin treatment. Protesters were out on Wednesday night.
The narrative lines were drawn instantly. The Trump administration called the woman a domestic terrorist. The Democrats said the ICE agent who opened fire was a cold-blooded killer. There was absolutely no sign of restraint on either side to wait for the facts to come in before rushing to judgment. More essential than the facts was who got their account out first.
(I started this as a newsletter, but it turned into a column. You can check it out here.)
Libby