 "Renee Good ‘wonderful person’ but her actions ‘pretty tough’: Trump to father of ICE shooting victim")
A week after the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by a US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, President Donald Trump had a message for the victim’s father. In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Trump addressed the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good, saying she was likely “a very solid, wonderful person” but that her “actions were pretty tough.”
The woman was fatally shot by an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross during an encounter in Minnesota on the morning of January 7. Videos that circulated online showed Ross pulling a firearm and shooting at Good’s car at close range as the vehicle moved. The Department of Homeland Security and Vice President JD Vance soon came to Ross’s defence, insisting that his action was in self-defence.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and leading Democrats say the footage suggests Good was trying to leave, not attack. One witness told Newsweek that “they just shot her in the head, she crashed.” Trump, in the Tuesday interview, defended ICE.
He cited “hundreds of thousands of murderers” in the country and blamed his predecessor’s “open border policy” for making enforcement harder. The president added that video of the shooting “could be viewed two ways” and referenced “a couple of versions of that tape that are very, very bad.”
In a separate post on TruthSocial right after the incident, Trump said that the video was “a horrible thing to watch.” “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-defence,” he said.
The case that rocked the US
The shooting incident reignited a national debate over ICE’s use of force and accountability. Meanwhile, Trump’s latest remarks were seen as mixing praise for Good with criticism of her actions—highlighting the political divide, as his administration doubles down on hardline immigration policies while state leaders and civil rights advocates demand answers.
On January 7, the day Good was killed, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an official statement: “An officer…acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him. My understanding is that she was hit and is deceased. These vehicle rammings are domestic acts of terrorism.”
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View AllMeanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance, in an X post the day after the shooting, said: “This guy was doing his job. She tried to stop him from doing his job. When he approached her car, she tried to hit him.”
In the midst of the debate, a poll from YouGov and The Economist released on Tuesday revealed that support for abolishing ICE is growing - 46 per cent of respondents said they were in favour of abolishing ICE, while 43 per cent were opposed to the idea.
Ever since coming back to the White House, the Trump administration has been increasingly aggressive with its immigration policies. However, ICE’s polarising tactics could affect the outcome of the midterm elections later this year.
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