In the videos of a jumped-up ICE agent murdering Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis we see the violence of the American empire coming home to preserve itself.
South Minneapolis on Jan. 7, where city officials confirmed an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good. (Chad Davis/Flickr/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
in Torrington, Connecticut
Special to Consortium News
The murder-in-broad-daylight of Renee Nicole Good on a Minneapolis street last Wednesday shapes up as a watershed moment in national politics. Let us hope this proves so, in any case. Our crumbling republic is greatly in need of a watershed or three.
Via all the video of the incident that has since circulated, the nation watched as a goon from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fired point-blank into the windshield of Good’s car as she tried to avoid a confrontation with two more of these jumped-up punks. Jonathan Ross, the murderer, then fired twice more at Good, the last of these shots from behind.
I could not take my eyes off the videos before rerunning them several times, and I’ve watched them several more times since. The scene, start-to-finish, is grotesque in 10 different ways.
Look at the body language at the start of the incident — aggressive, predatory — as one of these ICE primitives approaches Good’s vehicle. “Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the fucking car,” he commands. This is not someone who is enforcing the law in a sound, disinterested manner.
No, this guy, seething with animosity, has nothing to do with law enforcement or legitimate authority. He is a straight-out expression of the ressentiment abroad among the rightist constituencies now running riot in our no-longer-fair land.
Ressentiment is a French term the Germans borrowed in the 19th century to describe the poisonous mix of hatred and envy shared by any group that feels itself spurned or scorned or disdained — socially, economically, politically. This is the defining feature of the MAGA crowd. Most ICE “officers” are MAGA people who nurse their feelings of inferiority — another feature of the ressentiment complex — behind badges. What we see in the videos of Good’s murder is not the enforcement of anything. It is a hate crime.
Follow the videos of the immediate scene to their end. You see the stunning indifference of Ross and his colleagues while Good slumps over in her car, which is at this point smashed into another vehicle on the side of the street. Ross approaches Good’s car but walks away without checking whether she is alive or dead. In one of these video clips, two ICE people share a moment of self- congratulatory glee, Good’s car behind them.
The Trump regime has since described Good as “a deranged leftist” (J.D. Vance) and “domestic terrorist” (Kristi Noem, President Trump’s shockingly primitive Homeland Security secretary). Vance, Trump’s v.p., describes Good’s murder as “a tragedy of her own making” and promises Ross “total immunity” from prosecution.
On the Streets
What happened last Wednesday in Minneapolis and what has happened since has got a lot of Americans out in the streets. They are demonstrating against ICE, yes, but a lot of other things, too —Trump’s lawless presidency, the collapse of American democracy, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s laundering of the Epstein files such that what is disclosed discloses nothing.
The biggest problem isn’t they’re missing the deadlines, it’s what they’re redacting.
They’re citing the Privacy Act, and pretending it overrides a law we just passed. They also say they don’t have to release internal deliberations, but our bill specifically says they must. pic.twitter.com/Y6lqR51n5i
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) January 8, 2026
All good. Ordinary people are beginning to connect the dots and get off the sofa, having at last seen the oneness of the full-dress crisis in which the reigning regime has so swiftly plunged America. “Everything is a part of everything”: Remember that idiotic phrase from the 1960s? It does not seem so dreamy when you consider the American condition at the start of 2026.
I went to one of these demonstrations here on Sunday morning. It was a good turnout on the village green. I am pleased to be a member now of a statewide group called “ICE Out for Good” — a brilliant and compassionate pun that opens the mind as the meaning of the phrase takes hold.
Torrington is an old factory town in northwest Connecticut that once thrived on water power and the manufacture of brass products but now searches for a new way forward — a familiar story across the country. The remnants of the old, white working class now live side-by-side with a considerable population of Hispanics.
Torrington, population plus-or-minus 35,000, is vulnerable to the predations of ICE, to put the point simply. Nobody seems to know when the agency’s goons will come, but it seems a given that at a certain point they will.
The crowd at Coe Memorial Park Sunday came to several hundred and was properly spirited. And the placards held aloft were of infinite variety:
“ICE — Trump’s Gestapo.”
“Say her name.”
“Once you know, they all have to go.”
“Impeach Kristi Noem.”
“Protect neighbors, not Nazis.”
“Fuck ICE. No goons allowed.”
“America is anti-fascist. Fascism is anti–American.”
Etc. Now you know what a little speck of America sounded like this past weekend.
On the way home I thought about what I had seen, read on placards, and heard in conversations. I am leery of hyperbole, as it does nothing to clarify one’s moment, but is “fascism” at last our word? So I wondered. We are certainly closer to it than I imagined even a few months ago.
In this connection, I was bitterly amused to see Kristi Noem, as she declared she would urge the Justice Department to prosecute those of Renee Good’s kind as domestic terrorists, wearing a brown shirt (along with an outsized cowboy hat that made her look like a high school cheerleader somewhere in Texas).
Memo to Secretary Noem: Anything but brown next time.
Noem holding a press conference at the border in Brownsville, Texas, on Jan. 7. (Mikaela McGee/DHS /Flickr/U.S. government)
I count this a new moment as of last week. How to define it, how to name it deserves careful consideration, and I will give it some in a future column — accurate nomenclature being the key to clarity of mind.
But there was one placard that I will address right away. It was a piece of brown cardboard held by a kindly lady dressed in pajamas and slippers and holding her dog beneath her overcoat. It read:
“Look up. Imperial boomerang.”
How exceptionally astute is this? It seems to me this is what Americans must most urgently think about now if they are to understand their new moment.
Anti-ICE protest in Torrington on Sunday. (Cara Marianna)
The policy cliques in Washington and the pols that front for them have managed an imperium for nearly 80 years now, and no imperium is ever managed without violence. Was it anything other than a matter of time before what the American empire has long done abroad would eventually turn out to be what the empire would have to do at home to preserve itself?
A lot of the placards I read this past weekend in Torrington had to do with the defense of American democracy:
“Save our Constitution.”
“Criminalizing dissent is un–American.”
These sentiments go straight to the point. Since the United States began to cultivate its imperial aspirations 128 years ago — taking my date from the Spanish–American War — it has all along been a choice between democracy at home or empire abroad.
It is not an original thought. Twain and others in the Anti–Imperialist League got this right as the 19th century turned into the 20th .
ICE is at bottom a paramilitary force — precisely of the kind the United States has supported abroad in numerous cases over the past 80 years. Now the managers of the imperium impose one on Americans. Any understanding of this new moment must begin with this reality.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being censored.
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Thank You Patrick
Mr. Lawrence has earned the title: My favorite reporter.
Chris Hedges, of course, is up there with him.
Wonderful. Splendid. Ought to be on everyone’s breakfast table.
… and who causes the unbearable conditions
of eternal violence, unrest and destruction in
countries people migrate from? and then has
the audacity to call them “shithole countries”?
Follow the videos of the immediate scene to their end. You see the stunning indifference of Ross and his colleagues while Good slumps over in her car, which is at this point smashed into another vehicle on the side of the street. Ross approaches Good’s car but walks away without checking whether she is alive or dead. In one of these video clips, two ICE people share a moment of self- congratulatory glee, Good’s car behind them.
*
Certain words which people read have the effect of generating such extraordinary shock and anger that the reader(s) are compelled to repeat the words, – due to overwhelming anxiety associated with an immediate recognition of the Earth they reside on having been pushed into an extremely dangerous Fascist-run horror nightmare condition.
Such profound recognition begs the question:
What actions must humanity undertake to end, eliminate and/or extinguish the nightmare?
Excellent article. Thank you.
There is a recording of the ICE officer saying something akin to “F you bitch” AFTER he shot her. Definitely a hater with a gun.
“It is a hate crime.” It is indeed, and I postulate he knew she was LBGTQ and married to another woman since ICE had her license plate number. I wonder if anyone did a background check on this guy for hatred of gays. With all the toxins in our food, water, and air, especially the endocrine disruptors, hatred towards gays is just stupid misdirection. After reading a scientific paper in the 1980s by Theo Colborn who studied the disruption of nesting habits of birds and other species, finding females nesting with females and other anomalies around the Great Lakes region. I predicted a rise in transgender people in a generation or two and here it is and not their fault. If anything, they are victims (and many of us are) of capitalistic greed that does not care about the carcinogen producing effects of the chemicals being used on our food and permeating our waters. Transgender haters will someday be murdering their own children. Read Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn and two others.
Sign: ICE AND ISIS
I GET THEM
CONFUSED
New bumper sticker ? ICE = ISIS
Jonathan Ross (the ICEtrooper) should never have made it through psych screening before ICE hired him.
If he’d been screened correctly, ICE would have known he’d have an Elon level dislike of gay women who talk back.
It seems more like the screening for ICE is designed to hire people like him.
Patrick Lawrence always pens what’s right and true eloquently.
The Trump wrecking ball is spinning out of control. He has no education himself and listens to war mongers Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, Pet Hegseth and J. D. Vance. Trump’s attention span is, what? Three minutes? I have seen President Putin answer questions from journalists, heads and secretaries of states, politicians and common citizens for, once, three hours and again, five hours, with thoughtful, considerate answers. He’s my favorite president. About presidents, the elected (Venezuela has foolproof elections) President Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped and illegally taken from Venezuela. He must be returned. I’ve been to Iran, Cuba, Russia and China, and all these countries are better places to live than the US and Israel. Democratic Socialism is a preferred societal system than our fascism which is in full swing in this country. It will be our downfall. Soon.
Thanks, Mr. Lawrence.
If we truly want to halt illegal immigration we must level felony charges against the landlords who rent to illegals and level felony changes against the employers who hire illegals.
Problem solved.
Drew Hunkins,
Right, because all undocumented workers sign leases and work on the books.
If you’d stuck with going after employers (big ones like Walmart, Smithfield and Koch Industries, not a family owned pizza place), you’d sort of have a point. But the likes of David profit massively by employing less than documented workers.
Jay,
You’d be surprised at the number of illegals who work in a “legit” manner. The big employers and landlords think they can get away with it. It’s a free for all for them. Implementing what I propose would do wonders. The family owned pizza places should be hit hard, those are some of the biggest awful Chamber of Commerce Republican types in any community, they love all that cheap labor.
Do not punish those who try to act humanely. Recognize that many here are women and children, or men who have been persecuted in their homelands. We need sort out legitimate refugees from those with nefarious motives. More honest immigration judges are needed. Go after those with fascist intent and who act on it.
Jon, I so appreciate your view: “Do not punish those why try to act humanely.” Punishing those who act inhumanely fits the bill. Pretty easy to name these culprits – in government and the fat money corporate/Wall Street drivers of inhumane actions.
Did know the minimum wage in Mexico is 24.40 USD? Maybe we need open borders so Americans can work in Mexico.
hxxps://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/how-mexico-tripled-its-minimum-wage-in-just-eight-years-without-causing-the-economic-chaos-many-economists-had-predicted.html
Your comment suggests that is an hourly wage, which it is not. $24.40 USD is closer to Mexico’s *daily* minimum wage.
Drew, If we truly want to halt illegal immigration both in the USA and Europe then the collective West should stop interfering in other, non-western, counties, taking their resources, interfering in the people’s selection of they’re leaders, or invading these countries and killing hundreds, thousands of innocent people for these resources. Non-western people don’t flee their country because they are persecuted, they flee because of poor economic conditions created by the West.
The US, Western Europe, have dominated non-western countries for hundreds of years, sucking the resources so the West can be economically successful. The majority of the ‘illegal immigrants’ want a piece of the pie stollen by the Americans and European. That’s why they come. If all Americans and European just educate themselves to this fact maybe they’ll tell, better yet, force their rich overlords to stop plundering other countries, just like what Trump is planning to do in Venezuela and Greenland.
Of course people flee the South for the North because they are escaping political persecution or a war zone. These are refugees. Those who flee for economic reasons are migrants. It’s incorrect to say: “Non-western people don’t flee their country because they are persecuted, they flee because of poor economic conditions created by the West.”
@miguel: i totally agree!
“divide, CONquer ‘n’ plunder!” has been reigning supreme for centuries.
the global north never dared to care and share fairly what’s there.
i find the distinction btw (1) ‘refugees’ and (2) ‘migrants’ no longer appropriate.
– some flee their home countries bc they’re persecuted for their political convictions.
– others flee due to failed economic policies, bc proxy wars are being fought etc..
both categories suffer due to failed and/or highly unfair politics and policies.
IMO, the global north distinguishes btw (1) and (2) to look good:
“as we care about human rights we provide safe haven for political prisoners.”
[we’re not responsible for the millions of victims of our economic dealings.”]
“illegal” migration isn’t the problem. [predator] capitalism is.
those who refuse to see that have not suffered from it yet,
as they still have jobs, roofs over their heads, clean running water,
electricity available 24/7/365, good food to eat, health care, etc. …
Predatory capitalism is a problem, but so is illegal immigration.
We need to implement strict immigration controls just like other healthy democracies like Denmark, Japan and Switzerland.
Cesar Chavez always had this issue 100% right.
And yes, stopping the Washington imperialist machine would go a long ways in stopping the problem, but until that day, we must utilize restrictionist policies.
Maybe if the US stopped looting bombing sanctioning and destroying the economies of the global south their citizens would not be forced to leave their homelands.
Maybe the rest of the world i.e the global majority should impose sanctions blockades etc on the United States to stop it from terrorising murdering genociding countries/citizens of Latin America, Middle East, Africa etc