ICE shooting of Minneapolis mother sparks protests, DOJ backlash and resignations

On a gray January morning in south Minneapolis, a silver SUV sat at an angle across Portland Avenue South, its front end pointed toward the open traffic lane. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in a tactical vest strode toward the driver’s side. Video recorded by bystanders and surveillance cameras shows a brief, heated exchange, a hand tugging at the door, the vehicle beginning to roll forward and turn away — and then three gunshots.

When the car drifted to a stop between East 33rd and 34th streets just after 9:35 a.m. on Jan. 7, 37-year-old Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a U.S. citizen, mother of three and aspiring poet, was mortally wounded behind the wheel. The shooting took place less than a mile from the intersection where George Floyd was killed in 2020.

Within a week, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded there was “currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into Good’s death. Inside the department, the decision triggered a rare and public backlash: at least a dozen career prosecutors and civil rights lawyers in Minnesota and Washington resigned or sought reassignment, saying the case underscored mounting political interference in how the federal government polices its own agents.

The killing, and the turmoil that followed, have turned a block of Portland Avenue into a new flash point in a long-running struggle over police violence, immigration enforcement and the independence of the Justice Department.

A disputed encounter on a crowded street

The Jan. 7 encounter unfolded amid a massive federal immigration operation in the Twin Cities. The Department of Homeland Security had announced “Operation Metro Surge” a day earlier, calling it the largest immigration enforcement action in the region’s history. Officials said up to 2,000 officers, many from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm, would target people suspected of immigration violations and fraud tied to childcare and welfare programs.

Residents in south Minneapolis woke that morning to see federal vehicles clustered near a dual-language elementary school. Good, who lived nearby, had just dropped one of her children at school, according to her family. What drew her SUV into the middle of an ICE operation remains disputed: some local officials have said she was acting as a legal observer, while relatives insist she was simply driving home and became entangled in the traffic.

Video reviewed by multiple news organizations shows Good’s sport utility vehicle stopped at an angle across part of Portland Avenue, with ICE vehicles nearby. Several agents approach and shout overlapping commands — to move the car, get out of the car, leave the area. Good appears to gesture for the agents to go around her. At one point, an agent tugs on the driver’s side door, and another reaches through the open window.

As the SUV begins to roll forward, its front end turning into the open traffic lane, ICE agent Jonathan Ross moves toward the front-left corner of the vehicle. The video shows him stepping into the vehicle’s path and firing three rounds through the windshield or driver’s side as the SUV passes. Good’s vehicle continues a short distance before stopping. Ross remains on his feet throughout and then walks back toward his vehicle.

Federal officials have offered a markedly different account.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Ross fired in self-defense after Good used her SUV “as a weapon,” characterizing her actions as “an act of domestic terrorism.” President Donald Trump, in a post on his social media platform and later in interviews, described Good as “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” and claimed she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer,” who he said was “recovering in the hospital.”

None of the publicly released footage shows the SUV striking Ross or the kind of impact that would typically be associated with a serious injury. Federal officials have not disclosed medical records or detailed the agent’s condition.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said he reviewed video of the shooting, rejected the federal characterization in unusually blunt terms.

“The claim that she weaponized her vehicle is bullshit,” he told reporters. “ICE needs to get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

Good’s family has pushed back against efforts to cast her as a threat.

“She was not a terrorist. She was not an agitator. She was a mom trying to get home,” her ex-husband said at a vigil, where relatives described her as a loving parent and a writer who had recently moved to the city.

A swift, unusual Justice Department decision

The shooting would normally trigger parallel investigations. In Minnesota, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension typically handles officer-involved deaths, while the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division decides whether federal civil rights laws were violated.

This time, the process looked different.

The FBI quickly seized key evidence from the scene, including videos and physical evidence, and told state officials the bureau would lead the investigation because the shooter was a federal officer acting in the course of his duties. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office and the BCA were effectively cut out.

“We have been denied access to critical evidence,” Ellison said. “That undermines confidence in any investigation, and it undermines Minnesotans’ trust.”

At Main Justice in Washington, career lawyers in the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section volunteered to go to Minneapolis and open a preliminary inquiry under 18 U.S.C. § 242, the statute that governs prosecutions of officers accused of willfully violating constitutional rights, according to people briefed on the internal discussions.

Instead, they were told to stand down.

On Jan. 13 and 14, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters and sent internal guidance saying there was “no basis at this time” to open a criminal civil rights investigation. The department said the case would proceed as a potential assault on a federal officer, a shift in framing that effectively cast Ross as a possible victim before his use of force had been fully examined.

The quick dismissal of a civil rights avenue marked a sharp departure from the department’s approach in other high-profile deaths involving law enforcement, including Floyd’s 2020 killing, when the Civil Rights Division promptly opened an investigation that eventually led to federal charges against the officers involved.

Civil rights advocates and some former Justice Department officials said they could not recall another case in which the division declined even to open an inquiry in a fatal shooting by a law enforcement officer captured on widely circulated video.

Career lawyers walk out

Inside the government, the decision became a tipping point.

In the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, at least six assistant U.S. attorneys resigned or announced their intention to leave in the days after the shooting and the federal response, according to current and former officials.

Among them was Joe Thompson, a veteran prosecutor who had led some of the state’s most prominent fraud cases, including the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme involving pandemic food-aid funds. Thompson had been asked to consider investigating Good’s widower for allegedly interfering with an immigration operation at the scene, according to people familiar with the matter. He resigned instead.

“I could not square our obligations as prosecutors with the direction we were being pushed,” Thompson told colleagues in a farewell email, which has not been made public in full but was described by people who read it.

Other seasoned prosecutors — including Melinda Williams, Harry Jacobs and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez — also left or sought reassignment. Publicly, the U.S. attorney’s office has said only that personnel decisions are confidential and that it does not comment on internal matters.

In Washington, at least four to six senior lawyers in the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section, including longtime chief Jim Felte and deputy chief Paige Fitzgerald, took early retirement or departed around the same time.

The Justice Department has said those exits were part of an early retirement program planned before the Minneapolis shooting and “not related to any single case.” Several current and former lawyers, however, said the Good decision crystallized broader concerns that the division’s traditional mission — enforcing civil rights laws in cases of police misconduct, hate crimes and discrimination — had been hollowed out under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

Over the past year, the division has shifted resources toward investigations involving campus speech, allegations of “anti-police bias” and other priorities aligned with the administration’s agenda, while pattern-or-practice probes of law enforcement agencies and voting-rights cases have dwindled.

“It’s not one case,” a former senior civil rights prosecutor said. “It’s the pattern, and this case showed how far the pattern has gone.”

State pushback and community fallout

On the streets of Minneapolis, Good’s death sparked days of protest and renewed grief in a city still marked by Floyd’s killing. Thousands of people gathered at the site of the shooting for vigils and marches, many carrying signs reading “ICE Out For Good.” Minneapolis Public Schools canceled classes for two days, citing safety concerns amid demonstrations and heavy federal presence.

Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict,” and said Minnesota “did not need further help from the federal government” in policing. He proclaimed Jan. 9 “Renee Good Day” in the state.

On Jan. 12, Walz, Ellison and the city governments of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to halt Operation Metro Surge. The lawsuit argues that the surge and the federal seizure of evidence in Good’s case unlawfully interfere with the state’s ability to maintain public safety and investigate potential crimes within its borders.

“This is not about immigration policy,” Ellison said in announcing the suit. “This is about whether any officer, including a federal officer, can kill someone on a Minnesota street and be beyond the reach of our laws.”

Communities already wary of federal enforcement — particularly Somali American neighborhoods that have been singled out in past political rhetoric and investigations — say the operation has left them feeling targeted.

Residents reported heavily armed agents parked outside schools and apartment complexes and said they feared routine activities could bring them into the path of an ICE operation. Some said Good’s killing confirmed their belief that an ordinary encounter could be recast as “terrorism” after the fact.

An unresolved case, and larger questions

As of this week, no criminal charges have been filed against Ross. The FBI’s investigation, framed around a potential assault on a federal officer, remains open. Minnesota authorities continue to explore whether they can obtain enough evidence to bring state charges, such as manslaughter or homicide, despite federal claims of exclusive jurisdiction — a legal question that has rarely been tested.

Good’s family has retained Romanucci & Blandin, the Chicago civil rights law firm that represented Floyd’s relatives, and plans to file a civil lawsuit against the federal government alleging unconstitutional use of deadly force.

Meanwhile, a growing roadside memorial on Portland Avenue — photographs, candles, handwritten notes and children’s drawings — marks the spot where Good’s SUV came to rest. A few blocks away, visitors still gather at the intersection where Floyd died, now a symbol of a previous reckoning over policing.

The two sites are connected by more than geography. In one case, federal civil rights lawyers helped send officers to prison. In the other, many of those same lawyers have walked away, saying they no longer recognize the department they served.

For Good’s family and for residents watching federal convoys roll through their neighborhoods, the question now is not only what happened in the seconds before three bullets tore through a windshield, but who, if anyone, will be allowed to decide whether that gunfire broke the law.