The scar of state violence reopened in Minneapolis yesterday morning, January 7, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Macklin Good in her car within a mile of the site where George Floyd was murdered in 2020. Thousands are mourning and mobilizing around Good nationwide, remembering her as an award-winning poet and writer, an adoring mother, and a beloved wife.
The killing of Good, a United States citizen, came just days after the Trump administration deployed 2,000 ICE agents to the Twin Cities for a large-scale immigration crackdown targeting the area's prominent diasporic Somali community.
Bystander recordings from multiple perspectives showed three masked agents approaching Good's vehicle, which was positioned horizontally across a road, and jiggling the door handle while demanding she “get out of the fucking car.” Good briefly reversed before veering right as the agents closed in on foot. One agent fired three shots into her vehicle as Good appeared to attempt driving away, and she was fatally struck in the head. Good's car raced forward and smashed into two parked cars as she slumped over and bled in the driver's seat. Onsite personnel wouldn't allow a bystander, who claimed he was a physician, to check her for a pulse.
As footage of the fatal shooting stoked outrage while spreading rapidly across social media, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Good's final moments “an act of domestic terrorism,” claiming that among a mob of agitators, Good had been “stalking and impeding” the ICE agents' lawful operations all day before “weaponizing her vehicle in an attempt to run a law enforcement officer over.” President Donald Trump also referred to Good as a “professional agitator” in a Truth Social post, saying that she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” the ICE agent.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey skewered ICE's use of deadly force in a press conference about the shooting yesterday evening, telling the agency to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis” while promising a full investigation of the events that transpired. He also warned the city's residents “not to take the bait” while conveying their anger to prevent a military occupation of the city.
That evening, thousands of people gathered on the Portland Avenue block for an emotionally charged vigil that functioned as a peaceful but pointed protest to get ICE out of Twin Cities. Carrying remembrance and anti-ICE signs, flowers, stuffed animals in reference to Good's six-year-old son's toys seen in her car, and remembrance candles, those who came to mourn Good honored both her life and her death. Vigils emerged across the Midwest and soon spread nationwide within hours, and virtual tributes cut with astonishment and exasperation have poured in across the web.
Many mourners and organizers interpolate Noem's and Trump's reactionary quotes about Good and her death in their protest art, especially in calling out the differing interpretations of “domestic terrorism.” Others have underscored Frey's official use of “ICE get the fuck out” while bringing the phrase back into its origins in on-the-ground activism.
Signs with the word “remember” and a stylized sky-blue butterfly motif have also emerged at memorials and vigils for Good in Minneapolis — Monarch butterflies have been used as a symbol for migration and solidarity with immigrants in recent years.
Artists and illustrators have memorialized Good through their work, ranging from portraits of her happier moments to sequential images telling her story and its resounding impact. "In a world full of Trumps and Noems, be Good," read one protest sign, referencing the victim's last name.
A woman named Donna Ganger identified Good as her daughter in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, saying that she was “not part of anything like that at all” in regards to the protestors confronting ICE agents. The local news outlet also reported that Good, originally from Colorado Springs, had recently moved to Minneapolis with her son and her partner, Rebecca Good, who has also been called her wife in additional news coverage. She was recently widowed in 2023, and reportedly has two other children with her ex-husband as well.
Good was also an avid reader and writer. She graduated with a degree in English at Old Dominion University in Virginia in 2020, and also won a university prize that same year for a poem titled “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”
The ultimate lines of the poem — an esoteric, sensory contemplation on the parallels between how spirituality and biology are taught and embodied — channel a blunt truth that was harshly realized years later:
all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:
life is merely
to ovum and sperm
and where those two meet
and how often and how well
and what dies there.