By Julia Harte
Jan 13 – Video of a U.S. immigration agent fatally shooting a Minneapolis mother in her car on Wednesday has divided the nation, becoming a political Rorschach test that elicits different verdicts depending on who views it.
President Donald Trump and his administration have defended the agent and branded 37-year-old Renee Good a domestic terrorist. Local leaders and protesters across the country have condemned the shooting, saying the fact that Good turned her wheels away from the officer as she drove past him proved her peaceful intentions.
Since the shooting last Wednesday, Reuters has spoken to six Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 – part of a group of 20 whom Reuters has interviewed monthly since February – to better understand how they assess an incident caught on video that has been viewed by millions.
Each of these half-dozen voters, who vary in their assessments of Trump’s immigration policy and overall performance, came away from the video with the same conclusion: The agent feared for his life and his decision to shoot Good was justifiable.
Their verdict mirrors that of the Trump administration. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters hours after the incident that Good had refused agents’ orders to move and then “proceeded to weaponize her vehicle.” Trump said on social media that the woman “ran over the ICE Officer.”
Many Americans disagree. Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis this weekend to decry the killing and the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, called the Trump administration’s assessment “bullshit.” Frey said the video showed an “agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
But the video left all six voters convinced that the agent shot Good because he thought she was trying to kill him. All expressed sympathy for the stressful conditions under which ICE and other law enforcement officers work, and many blamed Democratic leaders for inflaming anti-ICE sentiment, thereby making agents fear attacks from members of the public.
Amanda Taylor, 52, an insurance firm employee near Savannah, Georgia, who considers herself “always pro-police,” said the agent was “protecting the community and protecting himself” when he fired at Good.
Taylor, who voted for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 and has had mixed feelings about Trump’s economic policies and governing style, said the moment in the video when Good defied agents’ orders to stop her car showed the agent she was a potential public threat.
“If they’re running from you, what else are they gonna do?” she said.
The first videos to widely circulate showed two masked officers approaching Good’s car, which was stopped at a perpendicular angle on a Minneapolis street. As one officer ordered Good out of the car and grabbed at her door handle, the car briefly reversed and then began driving forward, turning to the right.
Another officer, since identified as Jonathan Ross, was positioned in front of her car on the left. He drew his gun and fired three times, with the last shots aimed through the driver’s side window. How much contact the car made with the officer, who stayed on his feet, has been widely debated.
THREAT PERCEPTION
Several other voters also argued that Good’s own actions led to her death. “When I saw the video only one word came to mind, and that is ‘disrespectful’: another person failed to respect the law,” said Herman Sims, 66, a night operations manager for a trucking company in Dallas, Texas.
“We won’t ever know what would have happened if she kept going. Would she have run over someone else in the street blocks away?” Sims said.
Chad Hill, 50, a supervisor at a nuclear power plant near his home in northwestern Ohio, also said the ICE agent was “100% correct” to use deadly force against Good once she had ignored officers’ orders to stop.
“Putting a vehicle in drive and moving it toward a law enforcement officer is the same as drawing and pointing a gun,” Hill said. He added that the “political landscape in liberal cities has demonized ICE agents” for merely doing their jobs.
“There is no doubt in my mind it was self-defense,” said Jon Webber, 45, a Walmart retail worker in Indiana who fully supports Trump’s immigration crackdown. “The moment she threw her car in [drive] and revved up, even if she was trying to avoid the ICE agents, she came way too close.”
‘PRESSURE-COOKER SITUATION’
Even voters who had mixed feelings about the administration’s deportation drive felt the agent should not face legal consequences.
Don Jernigan, 75, has previously told Reuters that some footage of ICE raids reminds him of Nazi Germany. But after viewing video of this incident, the Virginia Beach retiree said he thinks the ICE agent who shot Good should not be prosecuted, just retrained.
“When he was out of the way and she was beside him, yes, indeed, he shouldn’t have shot at her,” said Jernigan. “But at that point, he didn’t know. All he knew was somebody tried to kill him.”
Although Lou Nunez, 83, shares Jernigan’s qualms about the aggressive tactics some ICE agents have used during raids, he said he would not prosecute the one who shot Good. The Des Moines-based veteran said the officers “work in a pressure-cooker situation” and that the onus was on Good to follow their orders.
(Reporting by Julia Harte in New York; editing by Paul Thomasch and Claudia Parsons)
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