MINNEAPOLIS — Renee Good’s family is suing the Trump administration and several federal officials over her fatal shooting by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during an operation in Minneapolis in January, her family announced on Thursday.
In two civil lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, Good’s family asserts a wrongful death claim against the United States and accuses federal officials and immigration enforcement agents of violating her civil rights, respectively.
Benjamin Berkman, one of the attorneys, said at a news conference on Thursday morning that the lawsuits “address two distinct but related evils.” One, which names the United States as a defendant, is about the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota, he said.
The second lawsuit, Berkman said, was about the “excessive force” deployed by ICE agents, including Jonathan Ross, who killed Good. White House aide Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her former aide Corey Lewandowski, former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, and Ross are named as defendants in the second complaint.
The lawsuits come almost nine months after Good, a 37-year-old mother, was shot and killed in her car as she attempted to drive away from ICE officers, bystander video showed. The Trump administration, however, characterized her as the aggressor and said Ross shot her — repeatedly — in self-defense.
In an interview with MS NOW on Thursday, Good’s brother, Brent Ganger, said he remains stricken with grief over his sister’s death. He still can’t bring himself to watch the tape of his own wedding — which Good officiated — and said the hardest part about her sudden death have been the ensuing conversations with her children.
“Seeing her kids grieve her is something that I’ve never experienced anything like,” he said, adding later, “You just don’t know what to say to a 6-year-old that’s lost their mom.”
Ganger finds the Trump administration’s claims of targeting the “worst of the worst” in its immigration crackdown to be untrue and found it difficult to picture speaking directly to the president about her killing.
“It’s a hard thing to imagine trying to see past the things that he said about my sister, and the people that work for him and what they’ve said about my sister,” he said. If he did meet Trump, he said, “I would try to instill some sort of idea of the person that we’ve lost, both on an individual level and the Minneapolis community, and everybody that she’s touched across the globe.”
He was not surprised when no one from the White House reached out to their family in the wake of Good’s death.
“It is still disappointing to not hear from people in leadership to hear some kind of remorse or condolence from the most powerful country in the world and the most powerful person in the world,” Ganger said.
The Department of Homeland Security said it launched an investigation into the shooting, but no details or updates have been released, and the status of that investigation is unclear. DHS did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s questions about the probe.
The Justice Department declined to launch a separate probe at the time, and instead tried to investigate Good for possible criminal liability.
In her first public remarks since January, Becca Good, Renee’s partner, spoke emotionally about her family’s loss.
“Every morning, she’s my first thought. I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama. How I’ll grow old without the love of my life,” she told reporters Thursday, her voice breaking.
“What happened to us should never happen to any family,” she added. “True accountability and change is the only way to make sure that no other family has to go through what we have.”
Good’s killing led to an outpouring of anger across Minneapolis, which had already been bristling against the presence and conduct of thousands of federal officers involved in the operation. Less than three weeks after Good was killed, ICE agents fatally shot another Minneapolis-area resident, Alex Pretti.
Shortly after, President Donald Trump replaced Bovino with his border czar, Tom Homan, who announced a wind-down of the operation in February.