I hate writing this. I would not recommend it, but I watched the video of an ICE agent fatally shooting an American civilian who posed no threat to him. She was actively complying with officers’ instructions when she was shot. On January 7, 2026, 37-year-old Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent during a Minneapolis operation, a shooting later defended by former President Trump and Department of Homeland Security officials as “self-defense.” Eyewitness accounts and video footage, however, show an unnecessary and reckless use of deadly force. This was not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader and deeply troubling pattern in which immigration enforcement operations have resulted in shootings and deaths amid intensified raids and aggressive enforcement tactics. Meanwhile, political leadership—up to and including Trump—simply rewrites the narrative, denying what plainly occurred.
These deaths are not tragic accidents or unavoidable anomalies. They are the predictable outcomes of immigration policies that prioritize arrests, detention, and deportation over human safety and dignity. Under Trump’s leadership, the immigration system became increasingly punitive, relying on mass detention and militarized enforcement rather than humane, evidence-based practices that protect life and preserve families.
The Trump administration has repeatedly framed these deaths as unfortunate but inevitable consequences of enforcing immigration law. That framing is false. Policy choices matter. Decisions to expand detention capacity, escalate armed enforcement operations, and treat nearly any perceived resistance as justification for lethal force have transformed immigration enforcement into a crisis of state violence. These are not statistics or abstractions. They are people killed, families devastated, and communities left searching for accountability.
If the past year has made anything unmistakably clear, it is this: an immigration system without compassion is not merely unjust—it is deadly.
