'Renee Good wasn't the first person shot in her car by ICE. The justification followed a familiar script.'

(MS NOW) Two thousand federal agents descended on Minneapolis on Jan. 6, 2026, an urban occupation framed as the “largest immigration operation ever.” By the next morning, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was dead, fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross, MS NOW reported.

In the shadows of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation blitz, a lethal pattern has emerged. Since July, immigration agents have shot at least six people behind the wheel of a vehicle (two of them fatal, including Wednesday’s shooting). In each instance, the playbook is the same: the agent claims self-defense, asserting they “feared for their life” as a vehicle was “weaponized” against them.

Yet the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy, which ICE is bound by, suggests agents are directed not to fire upon moving vehicles except in instances where deadly force is authorized. But the policy forbids the use of deadly force unless agents have a “reasonable belief” of an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Crucially, the policy cautions agents to avoid “unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”

Whether the use of lethal force in this case was lawful or unlawful should be decided by a jury in a civil damages case (and perhaps also a criminal prosecution of the agent who pulled the trigger, if warranted by the facts). But for the victims of constitutional violations by federal agents, the courthouse doors are effectively bolted shut.

Continued at link:

https://www.ms.now/opinion/ice-minneapolis-shooting-car-renee-good-use-of-force