America on the Brink
I’ve seen Orwell quotes surrounding the immediate aftermath of the killing of Renee Good, from 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The violence of the ICE operatives was witnessed by millions and the subsequent statements from Donald Trump and Kristi Noem that the driver had committed an ‘act of domestic terrorism’ flew in the face of what everyone had seen.
In a post on X, the homeland security department (DHS) said the person was a “domestic terrorist” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted “to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”.
The world knows that no such thing took place.
We are being asked to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.
As it’s been said before, post-truth is pre-fascism.
But there’s also the dark absurdity of it all, from Renee Good’s glove compartments stuffed with soft toys, to RFK Jr’s phone going off (RFK’s phone rang in the middle of a White House press briefing. It was a quacking duck ring tone. Dr. Oz took the phone from him, answered it, and said “We’ll call you back.”); to Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posing in a cowboy hat; to the unexpected side-note that the fatal shooting took place less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Jesse Watters from Fox News thought it was appropriate to inform us that Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by ICE, had “pronouns in her bio” and “leaves behind a lesbian partner and a child from a previous marriage.”
Kristi Noem said at a press conference yesterday: “It’s very clear that this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations. This officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation.”
Instead of Orwell, try Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Going Door to Door
Since the brutal killing, there have been protests across America, and talk of legal challenges and prosecutions. But I think this misunderstands the moment we’re in and the scale of the ICE project. Funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), primarily through the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” totalled over $170 billion for immigration enforcement, detention (facilities for over 100,000 people), border wall construction, and hiring thousands of officers to support mass deportation efforts, marking a huge expansion beyond its original $8 billion annual funding.
$170 billion.
And yesterday JD Vance doubled-down telling Fox News: “We always want to get them out faster. A lot of the I.C.E. Agents we’ve hired in the past six months are not even done with training… I think we will see the deportation numbers ramp-up as we get more and more people online working for ICE going door-to-door.”
This is what mass deportation looks like. This is what Farage has promised for Britain [[Inside Donald Trump’s deportation ‘goon squads’ that are blueprint for Nigel Farage’s Britain].
The horrific violence meted out on the streets of Minneapolis is the inevitable consequence of Trump-Miller’s mass deportation project. It’s not an aberration. And the violence, from the withholding of medical attention to the victim, to the stochastic violence of viewing the murder over and over and over is part of the play. ICE will not be ‘prosecuted’ or ‘shut down’ while Trump and his cronies remain in power.
Now Americans are in a position where large-scale protests will be used as the opportunity for Trump to send in troops and impose Martial Law. Faced with the prospects of a heavy defeat in the midterm elections, Trump is desperate for any excuse to cancel elections. That is why Tim Walz, the Governor of Minnesota, carefully asked people to protest ‘peacefully’.
“Trump wants a show. Don’t give it to him” he said, but there’s a danger in that too. Now it seems that the dam has burst and widespread protests are happening across the country. This evening hundreds are marching to the ICE processing centre gates in Minneapolis-St Paul, surrounding the facility and chanting at ICE agents as they line up in the parking lot.
A Deportation-Industrial Complex
If Renee Good’s murder has shocked people to the core, I don’t think its fully been realised the scale that ICE are operating. Because we see them in small groups, slightly pathetic, if brutal and sadistic, it doesn’t show us the gigantic nature of the operation.
As Margy O’Herron has noted: “The so-called One Big Beautiful Act allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States. The bill adds billions of dollars to border enforcement, but the largest percentage increase goes to finding, arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants already living in the U.S., most of whom have not committed a crime and many of whom have had lawful status.”
“The July 2025 funding package appropriates huge sums for deportations while neglecting processes that are needed for a fair and workable immigration system, such as immigration judges to ensure citizens or immigrants are not erroneously deported. The result will be a lopsided, enforcement-only machine. Most detention facilities will be operated by for-profit private prison corporations and other private contractors, creating strong economic and political interests that will make the new apparatus very difficult to dismantle.
“Taken together long-term detention and surveillance contracts, rapid hiring increases for enforcement, and new monetary incentives for reprioritizing law enforcement on immigration will create a deportation-industrial complex—an enforcement machine with financial and political constituencies that will outlast this administration.”
As well as recognising the enormous scale of the ICE project, it’s worth realising that it has morphed from being a border-focused immigration agency to an internal secret police force attacking and abducting anyone.
It’s worth remembering that 77 million Americans voted for this. But somehow ‘Make America Great Again’ became shooting a 37-year-old in the face. QAnon became covering up the Epstein Files, and stopping the forever wars became bombing Caracas and threatening Canada. Drain the Swamp became enrichment by crypto and America staggers towards a new dystopia.
Resistance has to come from the American people …. it has to be large scale, ongoing and consistent. Trumps revenge is never ending and has to be faced by the people. Their resistance has to be never ending.
ICE operatives are Trump & MAGA’s black shirts.
I am reminded of the way Irish people were snatched off the streets of London in the 19th century the Tsarist Ochrana, the Ogpu, the Gestapo , the Argentinian death squads and others.
America’s gun culture is not intuitively familiar to us. Common sense would tell you that refusing instructions from someone acting under orders with a gun and intimidating them by driving at them was foolhardy. She did seem to have been turning the steering wheel at the time, so the officer escalated too quickly.
The political side of the coverage can be seen in the contrast between this case and the killing of Ashli Babbitt on January 6 2021.
Ashli Babbit was forcing entry to the Speaker’s chamber at the head of a murderous mob who had breached the United States Capitol building.
Victim blaming by euphemisms.
Any law officer who felt threatened by a virtually stationary car would initially shoot out the tyres to render the vehicle inoperable.
The fact that Trump officials have ruled out any investigation into shooting and JD Vance has promised all ICE officers immunity from prosecution tells you everything you need to know.
Are you blind? She didn’t drive at them, she was, very slowly, turning driving away from them.
Are you suggesting if a cop with a gun says do something like get out of the car and you don’t, you can expect to be shot dead at point-blank range in the face, quite legitimately? Seriously?
What a total distortion of justice.
But then watching Vance’s press conference yesterday, the notion of justice, truth, decency and humanity is dead in the eyes of the regime he is a key part of. They have crossed the Rubicon – cruelty and murder are now ‘just’ and will be thrust on us, ‘doubling down’ with violent rhetoric and threats, as a means to try and take people eyes off the glaring, material reality. Making excuse for them is despicable.
It is only 9th January, but that may well stand as the most preposterous comment of the year.
Great bit of victim-blaming, Steihen Cowley. Did you provide this service to MAGA for free?
See the US Department of Justice Policy On Use Of Force https://www.justice.gov/jm/1-16000-department-justice-policy-use-force#1-16.200
From Title 1, U.S. DOJ Policy on Use of Force:
1. Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.
2. Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury … and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.”
Perhaps taking her registration number would have been a better approach.
That presupposes that the armed thug in the mask could write !
The officer would have been operating under the ICE handbook, which states (PNDBS 2011, 202-03) “16. Deadly force may be used only when an officer has probable cause that the detainee poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person. Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.” They are also required not to intentionally and unreasonably put themselves in a position where deadly force is the only alternative, which would include walking in front of a vehicle.
Clearly he did not do the latter. The first shot went through the front window screen when he was standing on an icy road and she was driving at him. The second and third shots were clearly against these rules. Presumably there are also state and federal laws that apply. The “stand your ground” rule does not apply in Minnesota (per Wikipedia).
It is fashionable in some circles to criticise law officers, without having been in their situation, but then take no responsibility for the lawlessness and deaths that result.
The lawlessness is being perpetrated by ICE gangsters. A woman who represented no threat to anyone was murdered.
He did walk in front of the vehicle, on an icy road. That was his choice, contrary to thevkaw.
He had then stepped to to the side of the vehicle before he fired the first shot
She did not drive ‘at’ him, she was turning the wheel sharp right and only very slightly clipped him as he moved left away from the front of the vehicle. Please stop spreading lies – we can all see it! There was no justification for that first shot, it is nonsense. Why are people lying about this? The guy was trigger-happy and paranoid and should never have been anywhere near a gun and the woman clearly had not physical ill-intent against him as she said so. And why was he circling the vehicle like a vulture in the first place?
It is so ridiculous listening to all the risible excuses by Trump and ICE apologists – you are making yourselves laughing stocks.
Stephen – you never answered my questions:
1)why did ICE officer not shoot tyres if he felt threatened as opposed to shoot a woman in the face- car was virtually stationary?
2)why will Vance not allow an independent investigation as opposed to blaming victim and giving ICE officer immunity from prosecution?
The answers are obvious if from watching every video of incident if you use your eyes and process what you have seen – it was a public execution.
The problem is that many MAGA supporters, including you by your comments, are so unthinking they prefer to believe what they have been told by Trump than accept what they have seen in reality.
You may be a true Trump believer, you may be trying to defend the indefensible I don’t know or care but in truth you just come over as a complete f******ing idiot.
It’s hardly worth speculating about what was running through people’s minds, more so when further evidence may merge. However, to respond:
1. The SUV (which weighs at least a metric tonne) was not “virtually stationary” but accelerating in his direction. Its direction of travel and speed on partial ice/partial road was unpredictable. Niemand writes: “She did not drive ‘at’ him, she was turning the wheel sharp right and only very slightly clipped him”, which is contradictory, as the fact that she was turning does not mean that he was not within in the trajectory. If he had to leap out of the way (and didn’t succeed), she must at least have wanted to alarm him. American (and at one time British) military training involves taking aim and shooting at a target so quickly that normal inhibitions on killing do not operate. That and the perception that he was being driven at may have contributed to his apparent misjudgment.
2. It is not clear whether a federal investigation will be more or less independent than a state one. That depends what procedures are followed. Politicians on both sides have weighed in.
Stephen – understand what you see not what you are told you have seen. You sound like a party apparatchik in Orwell’s 1984. You are a true Trump believer ie fantasist.
That is fantastical Stephen, and your attempt to pose as the reasonable voice of far-right extremism is laughable.
It is perfectly possible to be turning away from someone and still brush that person as you do so. That does not equal driving ‘at’ them which is a very different both in its materiality and intent. So there is zero contradiction.
Are you also claiming like Trump and Vance he was ‘seriously injured’ by that brush? The only way that works is by saying she drove at him, trying to kill him as they claim, because she is a ‘terrorist’, hence the justified self-defence of shooting her in the face. That is why they said she drove at him, so do you agree with the ‘why’ too?
Citing wikipedia . Really…
So what’s wrong with that?
The premise of this articke is mistaken. Shoot-to-kill policies in the USA are neither new nor exceptional.
Non-white Americans have lived under shoot-to-kill regimes since before Independence was declared 250 years ago. On an average day, three or four Americans are killed in America by so-called “law enforcement”.
The brutal, unlawful execution of Renee Nicole Good is not a deterioration of public safety. It is instead a weakening of the colour bar, as a pretty, blonde, white woman finds her life treated as worthless and dispensable, just like the life of a black American.
Claims of the USA as a land of “freedom” have always been an exercise in racist denialism, as black Americans experienced slavery, Jim Crow, then more subtle veneers for structural repression and systemic violence.
Trimps Department of Injustice is levelling down instead of levelling up. The sicklening brutality is a dystopian form of attack on white privilege.
I think you are wrong Claire. Shoot to kill policies and law enforcement shooting people are different things. There is a marked difference in what happened yesterday and the daily toll of death commited by state police. In particular the difference as I see it is that this is a federal organisation committing murder while being filmed and being backed up in an obvious lie by the highest authority in the land.
I agree with you that America has never been the land of the free, ask any native American. But I don’t think anyone ever thought it was, from McCarthyism to Vietnam, the middle east Latin America – America has killed thousands of people in it’s dash for supremacy. At home and abroad the USA has always seen people as disposable whether black white or any colour. It’s the poor they despise don’t be fooled.
WT, it seems to me that your key points of disagreement is your claims that
1/ American governmental violence is more class-based than racially based
2/ the thuggery of municipal and state police is now being adopted by the feds.
I think the first is mistaken. Yes, there is a significant class basis to American governmental violence, but the racial basis of the violence is was foundational, and remains very strong.
As to the claimed federalisation of repression, i think that relies a lot of the liberal notion of federal power as the just protector against wayward states. Yes, Trump has made made violent repression an overt tool of federal authority, deliberately removing both restraint and subtlety. But Americans are used to black bodies being mown down. Murdering a white woman on camera was not part of the old rules.
In the immortal words of Joe Strummer (lead singer of The Clash)
‘I’m so bored of the USA’.
As this is supposed to be a Scottish blog/website can we discuss our own country rather than obsess about USA (and Palestine/Israel)as there’s bugger all we can do about the place which is quite plainly descending into civil war.
Many thanks
Congratulations you have qualified for the term ‘Little Scotlander’ with your parochial attitude.
Just as well you weren’t around in 1930’s saying ‘who cares what is happening in Germany it won’t affect me’.
And just what exactly are your opinions going to affect what’s going on in the USA?
Please clarify.
Personally I prefer to get involved with issues nearer to home.
As for comparing Hitlers Germany to Trumps US……….laughable
John – I did not compare Trumps USA to Hitler’s Germany I compared your insular attitude to the relevance of what happens in USA to Scotland with the attitude of people in UK in 1930’s who claimed that what was happening in Nazi Germany was of no relevance to UK.
Reform are proposing an equivalent of ICE agency in UK and immigration is reserved to Westminster. Reform are currently leading polls for Westminster and are polling second for Holyrood so ICE what is relevant to Scotland.
The USA is the most powerful country in world and Trump is most powerful person in USA. Only today he has stated he had no regard for International Law and makes decisions based purely on his own moral principles.
The Uk claims the USA is our closest ally and that we have a special relationship. Like it or not Scotland is still part of UK and there are US military bases in Scotland.
John I could go on and on about the relevance of what happens in the USA to what happens in Scotland but I doubt it would make any difference to your ‘head in the sand’ outlook do I won’t waste my time or yours.
All I can say is that you don’t agree with Bella Caledonia containing articles and comments on events outwith Scotland I would recommend you ignore this article , go and make make yourself a nice cup of cocoa and put on some repeats of Take The High Road!
Scotland has always had an international outlook and taken an active and critical interest in what is going on in the world. Long may that continue.
Beware those who would have us reduce our horizons.
I think you are pissed off that for once you cannot justify something the right are defending due to incontrovertible evidence against them, though at least are not going down the Stephen Cowley route. But instead of just keeping quiet then (as I assume you would find it hard to condemn the ICE agent / Trump), you suggest this is all ‘irrelevant’ and shouldn’t be discussed on Bella. Your motivations and the subtext are like an open book.
I think that’s spot on!
Also, Laura Webster wrote in yesterday’s ‘Sunday National’ that on social media the comment ‘What does this have to do with Scotland?’ was being posted underneath front pages of ‘The National’ covering the US air strike on Venezuela, the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, and the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. This looks suspiciously like a co-ordinated effort by right-wing trolls to establish the narrative that independently-minded Scottish media should not comment on international matters but confine their attention entirely to the domestic sphere. It’s quite absurd, really.
Oh well, the police in Kircaldy can just pile on until the miscreant is dead, seeing as they dont have guns. That’s ’round the corner and unremarkable.
Ah! Late to the party with a rather desperate bit of whatabootery.
Graeme- Horsehead Nebuli speaks out of the horses arse!
I assume he is a far right fanboy from posts but he may just be a nutter. The two groups are certainly not mutually exclusive!
So I have jaloused! 😉
Not relevant to the article.
The gutter right-wing press are currently running stories that since the Iranians blocked internet access for their citizens numerous “Iranian agent” pro-Scottish independence posters on X have become inactive. Can I just point out that in order to swallow this you’d have to be stupid enough to believe that a nuclear capable country was incapable of cutting off access to their citizens without cutting off the internet for their agents as well as presumably themselves.