On the morning of January 7, 2026, the streets of Minneapolis became the stage for a tragedy that would ignite a national firestorm. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, poet, and active community volunteer, was fatally shot in her vehicle by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation. The incident, which unfolded near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue, has since become a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement and the role of federal agencies in American communities.
Good, known for her prize-winning poetry and her commitment to neighborhood patrols monitoring ICE activity, was killed just blocks from her home in Minneapolis. According to IBTimes, she was living with her partner and was out caring for her neighbors when the fatal encounter occurred. Witnesses reported hearing three shots ring out around 9:30 a.m., and local station WCCO confirmed that warning whistles had sounded in the neighborhood to alert residents of ICE agents nearby. Good’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that Renee was simply living her life when tragedy struck.
The immediate aftermath of the shooting saw an outpouring of grief and outrage, both locally and nationwide. The Minneapolis City Council released a statement honoring Good as a beloved resident, while Mayor Jacob Frey did not mince words in a press conference on January 8: “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” Frey went further, calling for federal agents to leave Minneapolis and declaring, “Get the f—k out of Minneapolis.”
But it was the response from the world of arts and entertainment that truly amplified the incident on the national stage. On January 9, pop superstar Billie Eilish, a nine-time Grammy winner with a massive online following, took to Instagram to voice her condemnation of ICE. Eilish reshared several posts, including one that called ICE a “federally funded and supported terrorist group under the Department of Homeland Security that has done nothing to make our streets safer. They are the domestic terrorists tearing apart families, terrorizing citizens, and now murdering innocent people. Enough is enough. Enough is enough. Enough is enough.”
Eilish’s posts didn’t stop there. She reposted a message calling for the complete abolition of ICE, listing 32 individuals who reportedly died in the agency’s custody over the past year, and urged her followers to contact their congressional representatives to demand accountability. According to Far Out Magazine, Eilish’s intervention was part of a wider outcry from artists such as Amanda Seyfried, Joe Keery, Dave Matthews, Mark Ruffalo, Neil Young, Duran Duran, and others, all of whom spoke out against ICE and the Trump administration’s immigration policies in the wake of Good’s death.
The official response was swift and uncompromising. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, issued a statement to Billboard dismissing Eilish’s posts as “garbage rhetoric.” McLaughlin asserted, “Clearly, Billie Eilish has not seen the newly released footage, which corroborates what DHS has stated all along — that this individual was impeding law enforcement and weaponized her vehicle in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to federal law enforcement.” She further claimed that ICE officer Jonathan Ross “had been in fear of his own life [and] the lives of his fellow officers and acted in self-defense.”
The DHS statement also addressed broader criticisms of ICE, insisting, “ICE does not separate families. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement.” McLaughlin went on to blame rhetoric from public figures like Eilish for a dramatic uptick in violence against law enforcement: “It’s garbage rhetoric from the likes of Billie Eilish that is leading to a 1,300% increase in assaults and 3,200% increase in vehicle rammings against our brave law enforcement.”
President Trump, never one to shy away from controversy, also weighed in. On his Truth Social account, he described Good as “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” and maintained that she was “shot in self-defense.” He further claimed, “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.”
Yet, the official narrative soon ran up against a wave of skepticism and contradictory evidence. Video analysis by ABC News revealed that, in the crucial moments before the shooting, Good was steering her Honda Pilot away from the officer, not towards him. The footage showed her vehicle moving forward down the street, apparently trying to leave the confrontation, when the first of three shots was fired at 9:37 a.m. Even President Trump, after reviewing the footage in the Oval Office with a New York Times reporter present, seemed unsettled: “Well ... I ... the way I look at it ... it's a terrible scene. I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
As the dispute over what actually transpired on Portland Avenue deepened, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz urged the public not to fall for what he called the “propaganda machine.” The controversy has only intensified calls for oversight and reform of ICE’s operations. More than a thousand protests erupted nationwide, and schools in Minneapolis even canceled classes in response to the unrest. According to Sentinel Assam, Eilish’s activism has marked a threshold moment, galvanizing a nationwide reckoning with the agency’s methods under the Trump administration.
The shooting has also prompted tangible changes in the corporate world. ICE reportedly stopped running ads on Spotify, a move attributed to the backlash following Good’s death. Meanwhile, Eilish’s activism has continued to escalate; she has long opposed Trump’s policies and advocated for gun control, having previously participated in campaigns following other high-profile shootings.
For many, Good’s death is not seen as an isolated tragedy but as the inevitable outcome of an agency operating with increasing autonomy and minimal oversight. As Neil Young wrote in a scathing op-ed, “Something has to change this. We know what to do. Rise up. Peacefully in millions. Too many innocent people are dying. It’s ICE cold here in America.”
Whether the outrage and activism sparked by Billie Eilish and others will lead to meaningful change remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the debate over ICE’s future—and the broader questions of justice, accountability, and the use of force in American law enforcement—has reached a new and urgent pitch.
