Donald Trump has sent waves of federal agents to Democratic-run “sanctuary cities” over the past eight months, depicting the operations like episodes in a roving MAGA reality show. The places targeted by the president tend to become temporary sites of protest—and produce fodder for his meme-driven administration’s social-media channels. The relentless pressure on ICE to ramp up deportations has left officers on edge. The neighborhoods they’re targeting are on edge too. Activists have marched in the streets and demonstrated outside federal buildings. But their most effective form of disruption—putting them on the front lines—has been car-powered.
In Los Angeles, Washington, and especially Chicago, loose networks of neighborhood-watch groups have organized to detect federal immigration officers and warn people about their presence. They send out online notices and alerts; in the streets, they trail federal vehicles, honking horns and blowing whistles to form a rolling alarm system. From what I’ve observed in all three cities, some of those who participate are trained, but many others adopt the tactics improvisationally. They have been shaken by the sight of gun-toting, masked government agents zipping around their neighborhoods in unmarked cars, grabbing people who typically aren’t engaged in obvious criminal activity. They want to do something. They’ve found that their cars and cellphone cameras are their best tools to blunt the crackdown.
The motivations that prompted Renee Nicole Good to stop her Honda SUV in a Minneapolis street on Wednesday remain unclear and will be part of an investigation now led solely by the FBI. Department of Homeland Security officials claim that Good was “stalking” ICE officers who were trying to conduct their duties as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Good’s family insists that she was not an activist and was simply supporting her neighbors after dropping off her 6-year-old son at school. A new video circulated by J. D. Vance and other top officials today, apparently recorded by the ICE officer who killed Good, shows an interaction that goes in a flash from low-level antagonism to lethal.
The video starts like so many others cycling through social media in recent months, with an ordinary residential street transforming into a Trump-era battleground. Once again, ICE officers and protesters square off amid a snarl of vehicles jutting out at odd angles. There is no secure perimeter. Officers outfitted for combat commingle with Americans screaming obscenities and taunting them. These videos often show the feds drawing weapons to force people back. Almost everyone—protesters and officers alike—have phones out, documenting the clashes.
The vehicles inject extra danger and unpredictably into these encounters. In Los Angeles, the first city where Trump sent Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino and his agents to ramp up arrests last summer, I watched several times as cars and motorcycles roared into intersections crowded with protesters and police. The vehicles immediately put officers on edge.
In September, Border Patrol agents shot and killed a cook from Mexico, Silverio Villegas González, as he tried to drive away from them near Chicago. The following month, a Border Patrol agent shot Marimar Martinez, a Chicago day-care worker who survived and drove away to seek medical care. Federal agents later charged her with attempting to ram the agent, then dropped the charges when body-camera footage and group-chat logs cast doubt on the government’s claims.
Yesterday, a day after Good’s killing, Border Patrol agents in Portland, Oregon, shot a husband and wife from Venezuela near a hospital. Rodney Scott, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang “who attempted to use a vehicle as a weapon against law enforcement.” Portland Police said that the FBI is investigating the incident. As in Minneapolis, local and state officials in Oregon called for federal immigration agents to leave the city.
The clearest sign that the Minneapolis video shared by Vance was filmed by the ICE officer who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, is that what looks like his reflection appears briefly on the side of the Honda as he circles it. Ross begins filming as he exits his own vehicle. There’s a dog in the back seat of the Honda, poking its head out of the window. Ross walks around to the driver’s side, and Good says, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” in a sarcastic but hardly threatening tone.
Her wife, Becca Good, who is outside the car, begins to taunt Ross as he films the Honda’s license plate. “That’s okay. We don’t change our license plates every morning,” Becca Good says, seeming to suggest that ICE does so to evade activists. She is holding up a phone, apparently also recording. “It’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later,” she says.
Becca Good’s tone suddenly becomes harsher. “You want to come at us?” she says. “I say: Go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.” As she turns back to the Honda, another federal officer gives Renee Good, who is in the driver’s seat, an order. “Get out of the fucking car,” he barks. Ross’s recording shows Good turning the steering wheel away from that officer. She appears to be trying to leave. Her wife is pulling the passenger-side handle, apparently trying to get in. The officer at the driver’s-side door is pulling on that one. Someone shouts: “Drive!”
Ross’s camera is jostled, though it is not clear from the video whether this is from it being dropped or from the vehicle clipping him. He fires, and the car careens down the street. “Fucking bitch,” a voice says, just before the Honda crashes into another car.
The FBI investigation will likely try to answer the question that’s been debated online since cellphone videos first began circulating: Was it a bad shoot, a term investigators often use to refer to an unjustified use of force, and possibly a crime? Or did Ross have a reasonable belief that his life was in danger as Good’s SUV came toward him? Trump and other officials haven’t waited to pass judgment, labeling Good a “terrorist” and Ross a hero.
I asked several current and former ICE officials and experienced officers how they saw the incident. “Murder,” one current official wrote to me. That official said Ross’s decision to stand in front of the vehicle will be pivotal to the investigation, and created the biggest threat to his life.
Others defended Ross’s decision to fire. “I don’t think it was a bad shot,” another official told me. “The officer acted reasonably based on his training and experience and how he perceived the circumstances in that moment.” All spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t allowed to talk with reporters.
Over the past few days, reporters and analysts have closely studied various recordings of the incident, noting the position of the car as each bullet was fired. But this level of forensic analysis can give the impression that each pull of the trigger was tied to a fully formed decision. Lewis “Von” Kliem—a former police officer with the Virginia-based company Force Science, which trains police officers and soldiers—told me that studies have found that once a person starts firing a weapon at a perceived threat, it takes one-third of a second, on average, for the person to stop shooting. Generally, that is long enough to fire two or three more times, Kliem said. “And that is in a lab setting, where the person is incentivized to stop, not in a complex environment where there’s often no clear ‘stop’ signal,” he added.
DHS policy authorizes the use of deadly force on fleeing suspects if an officer has a reasonable belief that the subject’s actions pose “a significant threat of death or serious physical harm.” Because Ross was positioned in front of Good’s vehicle when he fired the first shot, three ICE officials I spoke with said that they do not expect Ross to face criminal charges.
But two of those officials considered Ross’s decision to put himself in Good’s path a risky and needlessly aggressive posture, and told me that investigators may fault Ross for it. ICE and DHS officials have not said why Ross stood there.
The DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin doubled down on her characterization of Good as a “domestic terrorist” in an email to me. “If you weaponize a vehicle, a deadly weapon to kill or cause bodily harm to a federal law enforcement officer that is an act of domestic terrorism and will be prosecuted as such,” she wrote. McLaughlin has accused The Minnesota Star Tribune of “doxxing” Ross by naming him. She is ignoring the public’s right to know his identity—and the fact that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem first provided the details about Ross that revealed it.
Two former ICE officials and one current official told me that Ross has a reputation among colleagues as an aggressive, gung-ho officer. One described him as “enthusiastic.” Ross was also highly trained, having served on combat patrol in the Iraq War with the Indiana National Guard before joining the Border Patrol. Ross joined ICE in 2015 and works in the agency’s fugitive-operations divisions, whose duties often involve vehicle stops, court records show. DHS, which has not named Ross, said that he is a member of ICE’s Special Response Team, the agency’s highly trained tactical unit.
During one such stop last June, Ross was dragged by a car as he attempted to arrest Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala, a Mexican man who’d been convicted of sexually abusing a minor but had not been deported. Ross was nearly killed in that incident, Noem said during a press conference soon after Good’s death.
Court records tell the fuller story: Ross used a tool to smash Muñoz-Guatemala’s driver’s-side window and reached inside. The tactic is considered dangerous for officers, and two ICE officials told me that it’s generally discouraged because of the risk it poses. Ross attempted to subdue the man using his Taser, but Muñoz-Guatemala was still able to hit the gas and drag Ross at least 100 yards through the street, weaving back and forth to try to shake the officer loose. Ross suffered gashes on his right arm and left hand that required dozens of stitches. Last month, a jury convicted Muñoz-Guatemala of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
Before returning to duty, Ross would have needed medical clearance, two ICE officials told me. But he would not have been required to undergo a psychological evaluation, they said, and he would have been able to self-certify his readiness to get back on the job.
One thing that has surprised me and many others about the Minneapolis shooting is how much experience Ross has. He wasn’t an anxious new recruit; he’s a seasoned officer with a military record and years in the Border Patrol. Noem and other Trump officials keep bringing up that résumé in defending Ross. They also stand by the training standards of the entire ICE workforce, which has quickly grown in the past few months.
Flush with billions in funds from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE says that it has hired 12,000 new officers and attorneys in less than a year, more than doubling the size of the agency’s workforce. New trainees have been sent through a fast-track course that has cut training time in half. The administration is poised to rapidly expand its immigration crackdown. For the past year, federal agencies have generally focused on one city at a time, with Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, on the ground and directing the operations. In the coming months, these concentrated pushes could occur in several cities at once.
For months, I have received warnings from veteran ICE officials who say that the administration has lowered ICE’s standards and is on the verge of sending rookie officers into the streets, where they will face angry protesters and volatile crowds, without necessary training and preparation.
ICE officers are required to undergo yearly use-of-force training, but one official told me that compliance with that mandate has lagged over the past year as the agency has been under intense White House pressure to ramp up deportations and meet hiring goals. One senior ICE official told me that only about half of officers are up-to-date on their use-of-force requirements. I asked Trump officials at ICE and DHS what the current percentage is. They didn’t respond.
Great Job Nick Miroff & the Team @ The Atlantic Source link for sharing this story.
