Renee Good’s family sues Trump administration over fatal ICE shooting

Lawsuits accuse Trump officials of recklessness and civil rights violations in Renee Good’s fatal Minneapolis shooting.

The family of Renee Good, one of two US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents in the state of Minnesota, has sued the government over her killing during a sweeping immigrant deportation blitz in January.

The two lawsuits – filed on Thursday by Good’s partner, Becca Good, and Renee’s brother, Brent Ganger – say officials from US President Donald Trump’s administration were reckless and violated the civil rights of Good and others in Minneapolis. The lawsuits are demanding a jury trial and financial damages.

The lawsuits are the first major civil actions taken against the Trump administration over its unprecedented deportation crackdowns in Minneapolis last winter, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

The first lawsuit seeks damages for Good’s wrongful death under Minnesota law, citing claims of assault, battery, false imprisonment, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The second lawsuit alleges a civil rights conspiracy among numerous defendants including the immigration officer and shooter Jonathon Ross, who was named alongside high-ranking Trump administration officials, including White House Deputy Policy Chief Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and Trump’s longtime campaign adviser, Corey Lewandowski.

Good, a mother of three, was shot and killed in her car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in south Minneapolis when she and her wife joined one of the city’s daily demonstrations against masked and armed federal agents deployed to the city to arrest migrants for deportation.

Widespread cellphone footage taken by eyewitnesses captured the moment in which Good was killed, after agent Ross fired into the windshield, shooting her in the head, arm and torso.

Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defence and that Good had engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism”.

In a statement posted on Truth Social at the time, Trump defended the deadly ICE shooting, saying that the reason those “incidents” were happening was that “the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis”.

Days after the shooting, officials from the US Department of Justice, including then-Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche, blocked federal prosecutors from pursuing a criminal civil rights case against the agents involved in her killing, which prompted at least half a dozen of those prosecutors to resign in protest.

Minnesota sued the Trump administration in March to gain access to the evidence it gathered at the shooting scenes, but investigations stalled after the Justice Department halted its routine cooperation and evidence-sharing with the Minneapolis Police Department.

None of the agents involved in Good’s killing has faced any charges.