More than 1,000 anti-ICE protests will take place across the US this weekend after an agent fatally shot mother-of-three, Renee Good.
Civil liberties and migrant-rights groups will be staging events demanding an end to large-scale deployments of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
At the time she was killed, Good was participating in one of numerous ‘neighbourhood patrols’ that track, monitor and record ICE activities, according to family and local activists.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Good was ‘impeding’ and ‘stalking’ ICE agents all day, and that the officer opened fire in self-defense when she tried to ram her car into him in an ‘act of domestic terrorism’.
Good was shot dead just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer crushing his neck into the pavement with his knee during a videotaped arrest in May 2020.
Floyd’s death sparked months of nationwide racial-justice protests during Trump’s first term in office.
Reaction to the shooting has centred on phone footage of the encounter.
A new 47-second video shows the shooting from the perspective of ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who fired the shots.
With sirens blaring in the background, he can be seen approaching Good’s vehicle, which is parked in the middle of the road.
Both he and Good are videoing what’s going on around them.
She can be heard saying: ‘That’s fine, I’m not mad at you.’
Her wife, who is also filming, comments: ‘US citizen, former f***ing veteran. You wanna come at us, you wanna come at us, I say go get yourself some lunch big boy.’
Other officers then approach the driver’s side, with one demanding: ‘Get out of the car, get out of the f***ing car.’
Good reverses briefly, then turns the steering wheel toward the passenger side as she drives ahead and Ross opens fire.
The camera becomes unsteady and points toward the sky and then returns to the street view showing Good’s SUV careening away.
‘F***ing b***h,’ someone at the scene says.
Homeland Security reposted the clip saying it proves the agent opened fire in self-defence.
Vice President JD Vance said of the video: ‘Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman.
‘The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self defence.’
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – who called for ICE to ‘get the f*** out’ of the state in the wake of the shooting – has said any self-defence argument is ‘garbage’.
On Friday, protesters were outside a federal facility serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
That evening, hundreds protested outside a hotel in downtown Minneapolis, banging on pots and drums and carrying signs that said, ‘ICE Out’ and ‘Don’t Shoot’.
Tensions with the federal government have escalated beyond Minneapolis after a US Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and woman in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday.
Similar to Good’s incident, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the driver had tried to ‘weaponise’ the vehicle and run over agents.
Both shootings have sparked thousands of people to take to the streets of Minneapolis, Portland and other US cities to protest under the banner ‘ICE Out For Good’.
The rallies were being organized by a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump last year.
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