The family of slain queer mom Renee Good is suing the US government and half a dozen current and former Trump administration officials, seeking “accountability” for her shooting death at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent earlier this year.
“The time is absolutely now for accountability for the deep damage done by ICE and others,” Good’s brother, Brent Ganger, said at a Thursday news conference announcing two federal civil rights lawsuits, according to the Associated Press. “We will not be quiet. We will not go away.”
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Good, a mother of three, is one of two US citizens who were shot and killed by masked ICE agents in Minneapolis early this year, during Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration enforcement action in US history. On January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired several shots into the SUV Good was driving after she and her partner, Becca Good, got into an argument with immigration officers just blocks from their home.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials claimed that Ross acted in self-defense and that Good “weaponized her vehicle” and “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.” Witnesses and local law enforcement disputed that characterization, and multiple videos of the incident contradicted it. As the New York Times notes, a private autopsy determined that Good was struck in the left temple, and analysis of videos of the shooting by the AP and other outlets determined that Ross fired two shots into the SUV’s driver-side window at close range.
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The Times reports that Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has said her office is considering charging Ross in state court, but no charges have been filed so far.
One of the family’s two lawsuits filed in federal court Thursday names Ross alongside Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, White House border czar Tom Homan, former ICE director Todd Lyons, former senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino, former Noem aide Corey Lewandowski, and 10 unnamed federal agents. The suit cites violations of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act in accusing the administration of “a carefully planned, coordinated effort” to target Somali and Hispanic immigrants in Minnesota for “aggression and abduction,” and of using violence and the threat of arrest to intimidate those who “observed [and] documented” ICE’s actions, according to both the Times and the AP.
The complaint characterizes the shots Ross fired into Good’s SUV as “the predictable and intended product of” Operation Metro Surge, according to CNN. It accuses the administration of hiding evidence in the case and failing to open a civil rights investigation into Good’s killing, as is typical when federal agents use deadly force, for fear that an investigation would undermine the administration’s narrative about Good’s encounter with ICE agents, according to both the Times and the AP.
The family also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the US government under the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows private citizens to sue the government for deaths caused by negligence on the part of federal employees in the course of their duties. That suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages for Becca Good for “the immense suffering Renee endured in the final moments of her life and for the profound and permanent losses that her death has inflicted upon her family,” the family’s attorneys said in a statement, according to CNN.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the administration would “vigorously defend these baseless civil lawsuits.”
During Thursday’s news conference, Becca Good described preparing for the couple’s six-year-old son’s first day of school and for Halloween without Renee. “Every single one of these moments, for all of her babies and for everyone up here, was a monumental moment,” Becca Good said. “And she should be here for all of them. We were all robbed.”
Renee’s legacy, she said, demands “a better world for her children, for this community, and for this country.”
“True accountability and change,” she continued, “is the only way to make sure that no other family has to go through what we have.”
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