When Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good final Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, the 37-year-old mom grew to become one in every of at the very least 25 folks killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent capturing since 2015.
Within the days after Ross fired at Good a number of instances from the entrance and facet of Good’s automotive, visible investigations from retailers like The New York Instances and The Washington Put up have reconstructed the occasion, which unfolded in a matter of seconds, combing via a sequence of movies that emerged from numerous angles. These current obvious contradictions between the narrative offered by the White Home and Division of Homeland Safety, which claims Ross acted in self-defense, and what really occurred.
However related contradictions haven’t beforehand led to legal indictments in ICE agent shootings. In actual fact, there doesn’t seem to have ever been a legal indictment stemming from an ICE capturing in any respect.
I spent 4 years investigating ICE shootings that occurred from 2015 to 2021, over the course of three presidential administrations. I sued ICE for the logs of all of those shootings—a lawsuit that took two years to be settled—and cross-analyzed them with media stories, lawsuits, over 40 interviews with consultants, capturing victims, households, and legal professionals, and 20 different Freedom of Info Act requests for regulation enforcement investigation stories throughout america to piece collectively what occurred and what patterns they revealed.
Not counting the Good capturing, ICE agent shootings have concerned transferring automobiles at the very least 19 instances—that are linked to at the very least 10 deaths and 6 accidents. Process forces together with ICE brokers have shot at the very least three different US residents. They’ve shot in public areas with bystanders 22 instances. And in at the very least seven circumstances, the individual shot by an ICE officer was not the goal of the enforcement motion.
The Similar Protection
The self-defense declare ICE, its brokers, or their legal professionals have made after shootings has traditionally been confirmed unattainable to refute. An agent utilizing lethal pressure does so justifiably when it’s “objectively cheap and essential,” ICE spokesperson Mike Alvarez informed me in an e-mail in 2024.
“A regulation enforcement officer putting himself or herself in entrance of a motorcar to stop a suspect’s potential avenue of escape is a harmful tactic and a possible violation of coverage,” Mike German, a former federal regulation enforcement agent, tells WIRED. “However I do not assume that will be prone to influence a prosecutor’s analysis of whether or not the officer has an affordable worry on the time he pulled the set off that he was in a life-threatening scenario justifying lethal pressure.”
This reasonableness customary is what a metropolis, state, or federal company would assess when deciding whether or not to indict an agent for any legal exercise, and it’s evaluated from the angle of a regulation enforcement official, not a layperson, German explains.
“Prosecutors and judges are usually very deferential to regulation enforcement brokers concerned in shootings,” German says. “Usually, an agent’s subjective perception that lethal pressure was essential to guard themselves, or the security of one other individual, from critical bodily hurt is sufficient to keep away from legal costs, or conviction if charged.”
Generally suspects had been seen to have weapons, in keeping with the ICE logs I obtained, notably in the middle of Homeland Safety Investigations. However 3 times, ICE documented a suspect’s physique, described as “fingers/toes/physique,” as a weapon.
And in at the very least a dozen circumstances, I uncovered proof suggesting that the capturing victims had been unarmed.
Federal agent-involved capturing investigations performed by the Justice Division hardly ever lead to legal costs, and the outcomes are hardly ever launched publicly, German says. “The underside line is that these capturing investigations very hardly ever discover the agent in violation of regulation or coverage.”
