On the Tragic Shooting in Minneapolis
This letter to the editor, by Laurie Harmon, appeared in the Hudson Star Observer on January 15, 2026.
Social media posts and news reports surrounding the tragic shooting and death of Renee Good are puzzling yet prophetic. A good number of people, including President Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, began spreading a victim-blaming and shaming narrative at an atomic, disgusting, uninformed and, frankly, reckless level, even before examining all of the facts. They wanted to tell you what you saw, even before you saw it.
Author George Orwell addressed such a phenomenon when, at the end of his shockingly real dystopian novel, 1984, stated, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Those willing to obey their own senses, rather than “The party’s,” will hopefully see the reality of the overwhelming evidence that contradicts the administration’s “command.”
ICE agents are supposed to be well-trained federal agents whose jurisdiction involves immigrants and “illegal aliens” exclusively. They have limited jurisdiction over U.S. citizens with little authority to detain or arrest them. Editor’s Note: ICE can detain U.S. citizens if a person interferes with an arrest, assaults an officer or agents suspect that the person is in the U.S. illegally, per BBC. There have been more than 170 incidents during the first nine months of Trump’s presidency in which federal agents held U.S. citizens against their will despite the limited jurisdiction, per ProPublica.
They cannot legally make traffic stops of U.S. citizens, and they have to let people go upon finding that they are U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens are not obligated to “obey them no matter what.” The fact that they try to do so anyway is mostly because they are intimidating with their masks and guns.
Regarding Good’s legal protest activity and subsequent death, ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s own camera filmed the events, which — along with the other eyewitness accounts and videos — we can see with our own eyes and ears that she was murdered.
We can clearly observe Ross ignoring his jurisdiction restrictions and making a conscious choice to walk all the way around and in front of Ms. Good’s vehicle, using his cellphone to record in one hand while gripping his weapon with the other.
We can clearly see Ms. Good’s tires turned away in an attempt to safely remove herself from a dangerous, threatening situation.
We can clearly see that he made a conscientious choice to shoot at her, hitting the lower left (her view) corner of her windshield after he was clearly out of any perceived danger. He then made another choice to shoot her two more times. Afterwards, he quickly fled the scene after discharging his firearm and killing his victim.
Ms. Good’s death is a warning, indicating a much bigger, systemic problem that many people don’t care to realize because they are too busy listening to “The Party” and refusing to see with their eyes and hear with their ears. My hope is that enough people will start to realize just how dangerous these trigger-happy ICE agents are so that our lawmakers will step in and finally hold those responsible accountable. They are guilty as sin and blaming the victim is just continuing a harmful and hateful narrative.
Renee Good. That was her name. She was a mother, a wife, a writer/poet, an activist, a patriot, a citizen and a proud American. She was also gunned down in cold blood by an arrogant agent who knew, at a profound level, that no matter what he did, no matter who he hurt or why, the government would defend him. So far, he’s been proven right about that.
In reality, the video evidence from the offending, murderous ICE agent clearly displays what happened. With that, I firmly believe that justice will eventually catch up to Ross.