The Trump Administration's Abdication of Moral Responsibility in Responding to the Killing of Renee Nicole Good
Prior to an investigation into ICE's use of lethal force in Minneapolis, the Trump admin branded a dead U.S. citizen as a "violent rioter," "professional agitator", and terrorist. It has to stop.
Content warning: this post discusses the police’s use of deadly force with a firearm and the death of a woman. No videos or images are used in this post.
By the time you read this, it will not be news to you that an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, killed Renee Nicole Good yesterday, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen whose 6-year-old son is now orphaned after the death of his father in 2023. Her tragic death, captured in a series of videos that went viral online, has already prompted vigils, marches, and protests across the country, with many commentators interpreting her death as a preventable yet predictable consequence of ICE’s increasingly confrontational tactics and decreasing guardrails.
The central, explosive debate right now about yesterday’s events focus on who is at fault. Because videos of the shooting are widely available, obsessed viewers have spent the past 24 hours picking over the final seconds of this woman’s life. Slowing down the video. Taking screenshots. Drawing red arrows to emphasize a shadow or an angle. Reposting their edits online accompanied by a usually ill-informed legal argument to support their position on why the ICE officer was or was not justified. Everyone is a forensic analyst now.
I know this because I, too, watched the videos yesterday. I was a law enforcement specialist in the Navy and graduated top of my class; I know what it’s like to carry a firearm and I know what it’s like to have to have escalation of force laws and policies drilled into you. We also collectively know enough about incidents involving the police’s use of deadly force to know that we will never know less about the full context of the situation—both the detailed results of the investigation, if there is one, and the more complete social context of the shooting—than we do right now.
So of course I have my own conclusions drawn from experience and from research. But that’s not what I’m writing about today. What I’m writing about today is more human and more vulnerable.
Much like the killing of George Floyd in 2020, which took place nearby, millions of Americans watched a law enforcement officer kill a civilian in broad daylight. In Good’s case, she was shot in the face three times at close range while sitting in her car. And we watched that. On repeat. From multiple angles. I know why we do it: it’s because we’ve been taught through years of police killings that the smallest details can make all the difference in public accountability and popular understanding. On the one hand, I believe we should face the brutal realities of our political moment, and be moved by the evidence to demand change. But I also want to acknowledge that we are being exposed to a level of collective trauma that demands a dignified response from our leaders.
Yet Trump administration officials failed the public yesterday in a spectacular circus of cruel speculation, sardonic hyperbole, and outright malice that reflects a reckless abdication of moral and legal responsibility. Less than three hours after Good’s killing, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin characterized the situation with the top-line summary:
“ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” (Emphasis added.)
No investigation, no evidence, no “we are looking into what happened.” Just an unjustified leap into the moral void of characterizing a U.S. citizen who just died—under circumstances that are, at best, highly debatable—as a rioter and domestic terrorist. Never mind, by the way, that the administration was just busted in court lying about the exact same thing: claiming that violent protesters attacked DHS officers with their car, only to have the charges dismissed later with prejudice.1
McLaughlin’s response to this situation was irresponsible and unprofessional—if not outright dangerous for inflaming the discourse with unjustified assertions at a time when we needed the agency to be mature and measured. I don’t know if McLaughlin, a self-proclaimed Catholic, watched the videos, but I don’t think it’s possible for a human being to watch a fellow citizen killed on camera and respond with such disregard unless there is a corrosive incentive structure around that person so powerful that it blunts our more fundamental human instincts of empathy.
McLaughlin was just the tip of the administration’s moral failings yesterday. Stephen Miller reposted the video of Good being shot with just two words: “Domestic terrorism.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem repeated the claim that this was an act of “domestic terrorism.” On Truth Social, President Trump went ever further: “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”
None of this is supported by the video evidence available so far. A quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, is now circulating widely online: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” A friend of mine commented: “Some read Orwell as a warning and some read him as an instruction manual.”
Equally dystopian is the fact that this tragedy happened the day after the five-year anniversary of the assault on the U.S. Capitol that prompted the largest number of domestic terrorism prosecutions in history, prosecutions and convictions that this same administration terminated and pardoned. (I did the research on the data surrounding those cases at the time.) The hypocrisy of branding Good a domestic terrorist a day after rewriting the history of the actual largest of domestic terrorism cases takes hypocrisy to a whole new level.
The administration is demonizing someone after she’s already been killed, justifying the killing without so much as an actual investigation, and expecting the public to ignore what they saw. And here’s the thing. A lot of people watch the video and conclude the officer is justified. A lot of people watch the video and conclude that the woman was innocent. Video evidence alone has never, in cases of lethal use of force, provided conclusive evidence that all people can agree upon; we view visual evidence through our own regimes of cognitive biases. That’s why I emphasize that regardless of what any single person thinks happened, it is the responsibility of leaders to take the loss of life seriously and respond to the situation with the dignity that their office demands.
“None of this behavior is new,” you might say, and I don’t disagree. But moral depravity does not need to be original for it to be condemned. I refuse to normalize this behavior in our leaders, elected or appointed. I’m not writing to convince McLaughlin, Noem, Miller, or Trump to change. I don’t think they will. I’m writing this because I hold out hope that other Americans across the political spectrum who are watching this unfold, will resist normalizing this behavior.
I don’t hide the fact that I’m not a fan of President Trump—but I’m also not a particularly partisan person. I have voted for Republicans and Democrats in my life, and I have both respect and disdain for certain politicians and certain policy positions of both parties. So I think I’m on solid ground to say that even if you are the type of person who typically votes Republican and is more pro-enforcement, that does not mean that you have to adopt the kind of dehumanizing language that this administration seems bent on normalizing.
Renee Nicole Good deserves to be remembered for the life that she lived, not just the final seconds of her life. I don’t think it’s ethical or healthy for us to watch the violence inflicted on her on repeat—at least that’s true for me. I encourage everyone to consider getting some distance from the desensitizing circulation of violent video clips.
There is enough video evidence to prompt a careful independent investigation. If the officer is found to be at fault, there should be meaningful consequences. But regardless of the outcome, we must be vigilant against the divisive and dehumanizing rhetoric of this administration in the wake of avoidable tragedies like this. I believe we must find a way to hold on to whatever shred of dignity, compassion, and justice we have left.
Update 01/09/2026 10:44 AM: This post has been republished, with minor edits, as an opinion piece for Syracuse.com. “Trump administration abdicates moral, legal responsibility after Minneapolis ICE killing (Guest Opinion by Austin Kocher).”
For Further Reading
I apologize for all of the tragic news, but I think it’s important that we not overlook the fact that ICE detention has already had its first death this week. Read Andrew Free’s post for #DetentionKills to get that story.
Receipts: DHS press release, still online for some reason, and subsequent reporting by ABC and CNN.
Well said. Thank you