We need to change the way we talk about the ICE shooting | Opinion

In the days since the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, America has gotten a clearer picture of what happened between her and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. You'd think such a tragedy is a sobering moment for America's politicians, some of whom, from all sides, contributed to the environment that resulted in the killing of this woman.

If you ask any given elected official or a hyper partisan on one side, they are bound to characterize the officer as a member of the Gestapo and Good as a martyr. On the other side, they will characterize the officer as a hero and Good as a domestic terrorist.

That's the state of American politics.

But there are no heroes and no martyrs in the Minneapolis shooting, and it seems that precisely zero of our elected officials can be trusted to responsibly discuss the matter. Such tragedies demand responsibility that we evidently lack.

Here are the facts of the ICE shooting of Renee Good

In order to actually discuss the different reactions to the incident, first, we need a common understanding of what happened. Difficult as it is to get a sense of what actually happened in this situation, you are better off watching the videos of the incident rather than getting your summary from politicians or commentators. However, I will do my best here to provide a fair accounting. USA TODAY has a full breakdown you can also reference.

The incident begins with Good’s SUV blocking half the street. While leaving enough room for cars to pass around her, Good begins waving traffic through. One car passes her vehicle, a silver pickup carrying ICE agents stops, and agents exit. The agents approach her car, and one orders her to “get out of the f------ car,” while reaching for the door handle.

Good reverses slightly and comes to a very brief stop while another agent walks around the front of her vehicle. She then accelerates as the front side agent draws his gun, firing a shot through the front of the vehicle while sidestepping, and firing two additional shots through the driver's side window as the car continues past him. 

The situation is an absolute mess to me as an outside observer, so anyone involved in this situation is going to get a whole lot of benefit of the doubt. Here is where I’m at on this situation: Good should have complied with lawful orders to exit her vehicle; she was probably just trying to drive away from the scene, not run over officers, and there is no possible way the officer in front of the vehicle could have known that was her intent.

Fleeing a law enforcement officer is not a death sentence, but there is no way the officer could know that her intention was to flee. There is good reason for officers to never approach a vehicle from the front, as per their training, but in my view, a simple mistake in approach does not mean an officer must therefore accept whatever happens to them in a circumstance. 

The situation is a tragedy, and I think that reasonable people can have disagreements with my reading of the situation. Some might think that the officer even drawing his weapon was completely unnecessary, or that after a certain point, his gunfire became unnecessary.

I think those are legitimate points of debate, but certainly not ones that are at the focal point of the national conversation. 

Politicians on both sides are acting completely irresponsibly

As you can tell from my accounting, talking about this situation is a precise, not casual, matter. Every statement made about this incident requires a caveat, asterisk or qualifier. I myself am tired of saying “yes, but …” in every discussion I have about the shooting. 

However, that is not the impression you would get by listening to anyone in power discuss the situation. 

“This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. That's utter nonsense in my view.

Official statements from the Department of Homeland Security have said the same thing. It would be pretty strange for a deranged domestic terrorist to point her tires away from all of the targets of her attack as she accelerates. 

President Donald Trump went even further, telling The New York Times that “she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over.”

Videos obviously contradict what Trump said, and given that his quote comes right after this controversy, I question if he had even seen the video himself at this point or was being fed lines from others. 

Such a characterization is disgracefully irresponsible. Democratic politicians such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have a point when they call out the Trump administration's dishonest characterization of what happened. 

However, that's about all the agreement that Walz and Frey will get out of me with regard to their behavior. Their comments on the shooting are just as misleading as what Trump and Noem are doing.

Frey, for example,proclaimed that ICE needs to “get the f--- out” of Minneapolis. If you want incidents between protesters and immigration enforcement officers to become less heated or less common, escalating rhetoric and demanding federal that law enforcement leave isn't going to help. 

Nor has he been honest. Frey decided to submit a column to The Times, where he claimed that it was “baseless” for the ICE officer and his defenders to claim self-defense in this case. The mayor has claimed elsewhere that this situation was “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.” 

Meanwhile, the governor puts on a front of unity but really wants nothing more than to ally himself with the far-left demonstrators who are raising tensions in Minnesota.

"They want a show, we can't give it to them," Walz said in a news conference after the shooting. Such a statement is the most haphazard of statements against violence, and straight out of the Democratic playbook to say nothing meaningful.

In 2025, Walz called immigration enforcement “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” a grotesque characterization for anyone who understands the difference between law enforcement carrying out federal law and Hitler's secret police. Yet, when law enforcement officers are likened to Nazis, it's easy to see how a population becomes staunchly resistant to their operations. Suddenly, now, the governor is interested in unity.

Any legitimate points that Frey and Walz have about the conduct of ICE or the characterizations from the Trump administration are washed away by their own dishonest behavior. 

Tragedies and violence demand responsibility from our elected officials. Anything less is certain to further inflame tensions. Instead of meeting that mark, everyone involved seems intent on dialing up the pressure for their own political aims. 

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.