Beyond belief Video record of ICE killing Minnesota mom lays bare Trump’s disgraceful lies By: Melissa Martin Posted: 12:47 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026

There were stuffed animals spilling from the glove box of her SUV, because she was a mother. A mother of three children, including a six-year-old who was thankfully in school that day, and not in the vehicle with her. Her wife was, though. Her wife was right beside her when an ICE agent executed her with three bullets to the head.

“Domestic terrorist,” the U.S. president called her on Wednesday, before we even knew who she was.

Her name was Renee Good. She was 37 years old. She was a widow and an award-winning poet who had recently moved to Minneapolis from Colorado. The people who knew her described a woman whose last name fit her character: she was kind, they said. Her mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune she was “loving, forgiving and compassionate.”

Compassion: according to witnesses, she’d stopped in the street to film an ICE raid in a quiet Minneapolis neighbourhood. It is the right and, even, I would argue, the obligation of citizens to monitor how law enforcement officers wield their power against civilians. This is compassion, to care about how the people in your community are treated.

In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security described Good as a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” At a news conference, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem doubled down on that version.

“People need to stop using their vehicles as weapons,” Noem said, then recklessly implied Good was part of some grander conspiracy. “This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try and kill law enforcement officers is going to stop… because it’s clear that it’s being co-ordinated, people are being trained.”

It is of importance that all of us, and all media, consistently name these statements for what they are: lies.

It is of importance that all of us, and all media, consistently name these statements for what they are: lies. They’re lies, and they are brazen. We cannot dance around that fact, as one New York Times post on Bluesky did when it said that “local and federal officials were immediately divided on how the shooting unfolded.”

Yes, they are divided by the fact that federal officials are lying.

Or, as Sky News put it, in a top-of-the-hour broadcast: “There are deeply conflicting accounts about what happened.”

Yes, they are conflicting because federal officials are lying.

We know they were lying, because there is a clear video of the incident. When the video begins, Good’s dark SUV is parked at an angle in the street; it’s not fully blocking traffic. There is no violence, no “rioting.” Two ICE agents rush the vehicle, one at the front left corner and the other towards the driver’s side; that one grabs the handle and tries to yank the door open.

According to witnesses, ICE agents were yelling conflicting directions, instructing Good to drive away, but also to stop. She begins to drive away, first reversing slowly back from the agents, then driving forward with a turn to the right. It’s clear, by this turn, she is trying to avoid the two agents who had swarmed her vehicle from its left side.

Pause the video. Click forward, frame by frame. The agent draws his weapon as she is turning away; when he fires, both his feet are already clear of the vehicle’s front corner. The SUV has already turned past him. There is nobody in front; no officers at risk of being struck. Good is not driving too fast, or in any reckless manner.

Three shots through the front corner of the windshield. It’s then, and only then, that the SUV speeds up — in other words, only after Good was shot in the head and incapacitated — and crashes into the back of a parked car. The initial interaction lasts less than 10 seconds.

It hasn’t even been a week since Donald Trump was threatening violent intervention in Iran, if Iran should “violently kill” peaceful protesters. So what should become of a regime that excuses gunning down civilians in their own vehicles — ones who weren’t even protesting, but simply present, peaceful and momentarily observing?

What should become of federal officials who lie so brazenly, knowing video evidence disproves them? What should become of officials who leap to describe their own peaceful citizens as “terrorists,” believing with those words alone they can justify naked murder, and dominate — or at least muddy and distort — the public framing?

Maybe this will be the moment, the watershed, the point the dam breaks.

Whatever will happen, it rests now in the hands of the American people, the majority — I still believe — who can see this for what it is. Maybe this will be the moment, the watershed, the point the dam breaks. That may be optimistic. But you have to believe the fight against surging authoritarianism in the U.S. isn’t over.

In the hours after the shooting, Minneapolis residents rallied to chase ICE agents out of their neighbourhoods, throwing snowballs as they retreated. Tens of thousands rallied at the site of Good’s murder, and in other cities across the country. And Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stood in front of the media, voice shaking with anger.

“To ICE, get the f—k out of Minneapolis,” he said. “We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart.

“Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy, are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead. That’s on you. And it’s also on you to leave.”

By the way, it was inevitable, but: within hours of the shooting, AI-manipulated videos of the incident were spreading on X, altered to make it appear as if Good had indeed been aiming for an officer.

These fake videos will convince some. But to an extent, I think many of the people who share them know they aren’t real. They aren’t concerned with truth; they’re concerned with burying it underneath lies. They’re concerned with creating an environment where most passive observers, feeling overwhelmed by “conflicting information,” look away.

Nobody of conscience should look away, and that includes in Manitoba. Minneapolis is not so far from us; Minnesota is our neighbour. The fate of the United States will inevitably affect us in one way or another. More than that: the social dynamics that set the stage for this killing, and handed massive power to those who now justify it, those dynamics are here too.

We cannot allow the worst of those dynamics to gain a single inch, and this is how it begins: Kristi Noem and Donald Trump are demanding we believe that a gentle mother of three kids, with stuffed animals spilling out of her glove box, was out for a drive with her partner and randomly decided to murder ICE agents, even though no evidence of this attempt exists.

That’s not what happened. It’s a lie. The more they insist we believe it, the louder we must refuse.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca