FBI investigators are looking into Renee Nicole Good’s life and potential history of anti-ICE activism after her death, sources familiar with the situation have said, seemingly trying to retroactively justify her killing as they obstruct probes into her killer, ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
Sources told The New York Times that it “seems increasingly unlikely” that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent will face criminal charges for his shooting and killing of Good.
Rather, the FBI is focusing on Good’s life and possible “connections” to activist groups protesting Trump’s violent armed occupation and raids of liberal regions of the country, under the guise of immigration law enforcement.
This strategy lines up with the Trump administration’s personal attacks against Good. President Donald Trump baselessly said that Good and her wife are “professional agitators” who were being paid — a claim that has zero basis in fact, and that parrots false conspiracy theories that paid actors are behind the resistance to immigration raids.
It also lines up with the Trump administration’s directive, known as NSPM-7, for federal law enforcement agencies to go after Americans who take actions to oppose the president’s agenda, including his horrific immigration raids.
In justifying the killing of Good, and saying that her killing was because she was a protester, the administration is participating in the exact type of repression that it criticizes in other countries — suppressing citizens exercising their free speech rights with lethal force.
Whether or not Good is a protester should be immaterial to the investigation, as there is no indication that Ross targeted her because of her history, and immigration officials have repeatedly claimed that he killed her in immediate self-defense.
While looking into the slain woman’s life, the FBI is also seemingly seeking to let Ross off the hook — or even potentially give Ross a platform to be rewarded, as Republicans have done for killers like Kyle Rittenhouse.
The right is already trying to reward Ross. This week, right-wing billionaire Bill Ackman reportedly gave $10,000 to an unverified GoFundMe for the killer, which has raised over $600,000 for unclear reasons, as Ross does not yet have legal troubles nor has he even lost his job.
Legal troubles may not be in Ross’s future, despite a mountain of video evidence showing him shooting and killing Good. The FBI has barred Minnesota state investigators from accessing evidence in relation to the killing, citing federal procedure — while the criminal section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is also not investigating Ross, despite the normal procedure of the division investigating fatal shootings by law enforcement.
MS NOW reports that at least four top DOJ officials in the section have resigned in protest of the department’s refusal to not investigate Ross.
Ross has received unmitigated praise from the administration. Just on Monday, senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino said on Fox News: “Hats off to that ICE agent.” Vice President JD Vance has said that Americans should actually be thanking Ross for his service, and that he “deserves a debt of gratitude.”
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