After a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis last Wednesday, Trump administration officials were quick to come out in the agent’s defense.
Violent interactions with the public aren’t surprising, a former ICE official said of the agency under Trump. “That’s sort of by design.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Jonathan Ross—a veteran officer with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm who has been identified by multiple media reports as the shooter—followed his training and the agency’s protocol. Vice President JD Vance claimed Ross had reason to fear for his life and acted in self-defense. And press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to Good as a “deranged lunatic woman” who tried to run over the office with her vehicle as a weapon. Officials repeatedly accused Good of perpetrating “domestic terrorism.”
The narrative put forward by the administration is largely disproved by available video evidence. And it has even been received with skepticism by some former ICE employees, who are condemning Ross’ use of force against the 37-year-old mother of three and warning that their one-time agency has lost its way.
Former ICE chief of staff Jason Hauser recently wrote in USA Today: “When enforcement is driven by messaging instead of mission, when optics outweigh judgment and when leadership substitutes spectacle for strategy, the risk to officers, civilian and public safety increases exponentially.”
The second Trump presidency has taken ICE off the leash. The agency is now the highest-funded law enforcement body in the United States, with a budget that eclipses that of some countries’ militaries. With its near-unlimited resources and aggressive directions from the White House, ICE is sending federal immigration agents not trained in community policing to make at-large arrests in cities across the country. (Days after the shooting, Noem announced DHS would deploy hundreds more agents to Minneapolis.)
Two ex-ICE workers I spoke with described an agency that, in pursuit of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mandate, is engaging in reckless and risky behavior.
“They’re essentially operating now in a resource constraint-free environment and doing very dangerous things,” said Scott Shuchart, who previously worked at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS and more recently as ICE’s assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy under the Biden administration. Violent interactions with the public aren’t surprising, he added. “That’s sort of by design.”
Dan Gividen, an immigration lawyer who acted as deputy chief counsel for ICE’s Dallas field office between 2016 and 2019, compared what the agency is doing as akin to running into a crowded movie theater and yelling “fire.” “You’ve got these ICE officers that are pouring out of these vehicles, pointing guns at US citizens—people who’ve done absolutely nothing wrong—and causing chaos.”
ICE removal agents charged with doing administrative arrests, he said, lack the tactical training to safely do operations out in communities. “It’s not at all surprising that this is happening with these ICE ERO officers being sent out to basically treat people terribly,” he said, anticipating more escalation of violence.
Another former ICE trial attorney I spoke with said that, typically, removal officers weren’t trained in high-risk operations because the daily demands of the job didn’t require it. In the past, if such an encounter took place, local law enforcement might have gotten involved to help keep the situation under control. “What has changed is there has been an encouragement from the top to be much more aggressive in enforcement and ramp things up and get the job done,” the ex-counsel for the agency told me.
In Gividen’s view, the federal immigration agents didn’t have a reason to interact with Good to begin with. “He had no reason to believe she had committed any offense that he actually has the authority to investigate,” Gividen said of Ross. “They murdered her, plain and simple. That is all there is to it. The notion that they were in any way, shape, or form acting in self-defense to put three bullets in that woman is absolutely absurd.”
An ICE’s use of force and firearms policy directive from 2023 states that authorized officers should only use force when “no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative” is available. It also mandates that the level of force be “objectively reasonable” given the circumstances and instructs officers to “de-escalate” the situation. The guidelines further state that an agent who uses deadly force should be placed on administrative leave for three consecutive days. (ICE didn’t respond to questions from Mother Jones about its policies and whether Ross had been put on leave.)
“They murdered her, plain and simple. That is all there is to it.”
“The question isn’t: Was he in any danger?” Shuchart said. “The question is: Was the use of force the only thing he could do to address the danger? And was the use of immediate deadly force the appropriate level of force?”
One of the videos shows that Ross appeared to move out of the way to avoid possible contact with the car. “I don’t understand how you get from there to the idea that deadly stop and force against the driver was necessary to protect the officer from serious bodily harm,” added Shuchart, who until January 2025 was part of a team that handles ICE-wide policy and regulations.
A DHS-wide 2023 policy on use of force generally prohibits deadly force “solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject” and the discharging of firearms to “disable moving vehicles.” But a recent Wall Street Journal investigation identified at least 13 instances since July where immigration agents fired at or into civilian cars, shooting eight people—including five US citizens—and leaving two dead.
Instead of de-escalating, Shuchart said, Ross only “exacerbated the danger.” Shuchart pointed to a number of errors Ross made that could have been avoided, starting with his decision to step in front of the car. “This officer was not just freshly coming across the scene when a vehicle lurches at him,” he said. “[He] had already violated policy creating a danger to himself by crossing in front of the vehicle that wasn’t in park. You have to assess what was reasonable in those circumstances from the fact that he had created the potential danger to himself.”
Prior to joining ERO, Ross did a stint with the Indiana National Guard in Iraq and worked as a field intelligence agent for the Border Patrol. His job as an ICE deportation officer in the Twin Cities area involved arresting “higher-value targets,” according to his own testimony from court records obtained by Wired, related to an accident last June when Ross was dragged by a car during an arrest.
“As a matter of what someone in law enforcement anywhere would be trained to do, and what someone would be trained to do under DHS policy, what he was doing was nuts,” Shuchart said of Ross’ actions last week. “He was so completely out of line with respect to what would have been safe for him and the other people on that operation. It was not at all how any kind of operation should go.”
“As a matter of what someone in law enforcement anywhere would be trained to do, and what someone would be trained to do under DHS policy, what he was doing was nuts.”
According to Shuchart, the agents at the scene also failed to follow protocol in the aftermath of the shooting by appearing to not immediately render medical assistance or confirm that, if the target was in fact a threat, they no longer presented danger.
Speaking to the New York Times, Trump appeared to try to justify Good’s killing by saying she had been “very, very disrespectful” to law enforcement. “
The fact that their feelings are hurt by US citizens disapproving of what they do loudly is completely irrelevant,” Shuchart said. “The point of the job is not to have your feelings well-cared for by the public.”
Under pressure to meet the administration’s goal of 3,000 daily arrests, ICE has been on a hiring spree. The agency is offering candidates signing bonuses and plans a $100 million “wartime recruitment” effort that includes geo-targeted ads and influencers targeting gun rights supporters and UFC fights attendees to bring in as many as 10,000 new hires. Earlier this month, DHS publicized the addition of 12,000 officers and agents—from a pool of 220,000 “patriotic” applicants who responded to the government’s “Defend the Homeland” calls—more than doubling ICE’s workforce.
So far, the result of that expansion drive has been less than optimal, with recruits failing fitness tests and not undergoing proper vetting. Experts have also raised concerns about the lowering of standards and reduced training times for new hires as the administration pushes to get more agents in the streets and rack up arrest numbers quickly.
“I would be skeptical of anyone who would take a job with an agency that is willing to defend behavior this unprofessional,” Shuchart said. “There are thousands of law enforcement agencies in this country. If you’re a decent recruit, go work for one of the others that has more reasonable standards and expectations.”
