By Julia Harte
Jan. 13 – Video of a U.S. immigration agent fatally shooting a Minneapolis mother in her car Wednesday divided the nation, becoming a political Rorschach test that draws different verdicts depending on who sees it.
President Donald Trump and his administration have defended the agent and labeled Renee Good, 37, a domestic terrorist. Local leaders and protesters across the country condemned the shooting, saying the fact that Good turned her wheels away from the officer as she drove past proved her peaceful intentions.
Since last Wednesday’s shooting, Reuters spoke to six Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 – part of a group of 20 that Reuters has interviewed monthly since February – to better understand how they view an incident captured on video that has been viewed by millions.
Each of those half-dozen voters, who vary in their assessments of Trump’s immigration policy and overall performance, came away from the video with the same conclusion: The agent feared for his life and his decision to shoot Good was justified.
Their verdict mirrors that of the Trump administration. US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters hours after the incident that Good refused agents’ orders to move and then “proceeded to arm his vehicle.” Trump said on social media that the woman “ran over the ICE officer.”
Many Americans disagree. Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis this weekend to condemn the killing, and the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, called the Trump administration’s assessment “nonsense.” Frey said the video showed an “officer recklessly using force that resulted in the death of someone, killed.”
But the video left all six voters convinced the agent shot Good because he thought she was trying to kill him. All expressed sympathy for the stressful conditions under which ICE and other law enforcement officers work, and many blamed Democratic leaders for stoking anti-ICE sentiment, making agents fearful of attacks from members of the public.
Amanda Taylor, 52, an insurance company employee near Savannah, Ga., who considers herself “always pro-police,” said the officer was “protecting the community and protecting himself” when he shot Good.
Taylor, who voted for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 and has mixed feelings about Trump’s economic policies and governing style, said the moment in the video when Good defied the agents’ orders to stop his car showed the agent that he was a potential public threat.
“If they run from you, what will they do?” she said.
The first videos that circulated widely showed two masked officers approaching Good’s car, which was stopped at a perpendicular angle on a Minneapolis street. As an officer ordered Good out of the car and grabbed her by the door handle, the car backed up briefly, then began to drive forward, aiming to the right.
Another officer, since identified as Jonathan Ross, was positioned in front of her car on the left. He pulled out his gun and fired three times, the last shots being aimed through the driver’s side window. How much contact the car made with the officer, who remained standing, has been widely debated.
THREAT PERCEPTION
Several other voters also claimed that Good’s own actions led to her death. “There’s only one word that comes to mind when I saw the video, and that’s ‘disrespectful’: another person disobeyed the law,” said Herman Sims, 66, a night operations manager for a trucking company in Dallas, Texas.
“We’ll never know what would have happened if it had continued. Would it have hit someone else in the blocks down the street?” Sims said.
Chad Hill, 50, a supervisor at a nuclear plant near his northwest Ohio home, also said the ICE agent was “100 percent right” to use deadly force against Good once he ignored officers’ orders to stop.
“Putting a vehicle in your car and driving it toward a law enforcement officer is the same as pulling and pointing a gun,” Hill said. He added that “the political landscape in liberal cities has demonized ICE agents” for just doing their job.
“There’s no question in my mind that it was self-defense,” said Jon Webber, 45, a Walmart retail worker in Indiana who fully supports Trump’s immigration crackdown. “The moment he threw his car in [drive] and sped off, even though he tried to avoid ICE agents, he got too close.”
“COOL PRESSURE SITUATION”
Even voters who had mixed feelings about the administration’s deportation push felt the agent should not face legal consequences.
Don Jernigan, 75, previously told Reuters that some images of ICE raids reminded him of Nazi Germany. But after watching the video of that incident, the Virginia Beach retiree said he believes the ICE agent who shot Good should not be prosecuted, just retrained.
“When he was moving out of the way and she was next to him, yeah, he really shouldn’t have shot her,” Jernigan said. “But at the time, he didn’t know. All he knew was that someone was trying to kill him.”
Although Lou Nunez, 83, shares Jernigan’s reservations about the aggressive tactics some ICE agents have used during raids, he said he will not go after the person who shot Good. The Des Moines veteran said officers are “working in a pressure cooker situation” and that the task is “good to follow orders.”
(Reporting by Julia Harte in New York; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Claudia Parsons)