Millions of Americans continue to mourn the tragic death of Renee Good, the Minneapolis mother fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week mere blocks from her home.

Good, who was driving a maroon Honda near the protest, was confronted by ICE agents in several vehicles. One agent approached her, walked up to her car, tugged at her door handle, and screamed “Get the f— out of the car!” Good attempted to back up her car and then drove forward, speeding around an ICE officer who pumped three bullets into the car.

“Renee Nicole Good was a mother of three, including a 6-year-old boy who is now an orphan,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) said in a statement. “Renee was deeply loved by many . . . by refusing to coordinate with local law enforcement, ICE is not making our community safe. It is making it less safe. “Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison described the ICE agents’ actions as an “escalation” and said Good was trying to get away from the situation without being aggressive. “I think the use of force I saw raises such serious questions that there needs to be an intense investigation and perhaps this officer should face charges,” Ellison said. “But that needs to be determined through an investigation.”

To no one’s surprise, the commentary on the right took a largely contrasting tone.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argued Good had committed an “act of domestic terrorism.” “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One. Routinely irascible Fox News host Jesse Watters perversely and inexplicably chose to focus on the fact Good was a supposed troublemaker and member of the LGBTQIA+ community who “leaves behind a lesbian partner and a child from a previous marriage.” Understandably, such a senseless tragedy has shocked, shaken, horrified and outraged much of the nation.

Millions of Americans have reacted by taking to the streets, protesting and voicing their rage at such a violent incident. Networks of citizen patrols in cities such as Portland, Oregon, Chicago, and Boston are employing whistles, car horns, bull horns and other devices to alert immigrants and likeminded neighbors in an effort to abort aggressive, heavy-handed activity from ICE agents.

These efforts have quickly become deeply entrenched in communities all over the nation, creating a network of ICE monitoring groups all over the nation, particularly in blue states and racially diverse areas. Information on how to monitor activity and track specific locations and license plates on vehicles used by ICE agents are being provided to citizens. Data demonstrating where sweeps have previously occurred have been shared.  In numerous locales, instructions have been meticulously reviewed by attorneys to ensure that ICE monitors do not overstep their boundaries.

There are those who argue the tragedy has received outsized attention and a notable degree of compassion due to the fact Renee Good was a white, blond woman. Did Good’s race, gender and physical attributes play a role in the outpouring of empathy she has received? To be sure, such realities could very well be true. The attractive, missing white woman syndrome is hardly a mythical proposition.

Varied assumptions aside, the outright falsehoods about the Minneapolis incident being spewed by the Trump administration and the right-wing media echo chamber are problematic for many reasons. Such misinformation espouses the bogus perception federal agents are in an ongoing state of physical jeopardy from unhinged protestors and citizens, and thus have every right to employ lethal force at the most minimal assumption of harm. It also reassures federal agents they can inflict violence upon or even murder American citizens with impunity and sends an ominous message to individuals inclined to take to the streets to express their displeasure toward the Trump administration’s immigration policies that they can be easily exposed to various types of potentially lethal situations

The issue of ICE and immigration will likely continue to fester, with politicians of every stripe and sizable segment of the larger public retreating to bipartisan positions. Nevertheless, heavy patrolling and occupation by federal agents in our nation’s cities, targeting our nation’s citizens and engaging in Gestapo-like tactics, is disturbing, alarming, and unsettling. It sets a harrowingly precarious and politically dark precedent for the nation’s future.

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Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.