In recent days it has happened to see on social media and newspapers the video in which a federal agent of theICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)fires three shots at Renée Nicole Good, an American citizen with no criminal record, in Minneapolis (January 7, 2026).
Good’s case is not an isolated case, nor the last: precisely as part of the protests over his death, in the same city an officer shot an immigrant, seriously wounding him.
But what exactly is this ICE, now at the center of a new political and media storm?
What ICE does and who the agents are
THE’ICE is an American federal agency established way back in March 2003 as an anti-terrorism force after the attack on the Twin Towers, whose budget is around eight billion dollars. The agency would have at least 21,800 people, divided into two sections:
- the ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations), which is the operational part, with armed agents who deal with immigration, arrest, detention and expulsion of immigrants without a residence permit and awaiting expulsion.
- The HSI (Homeland Security Investigations), i.e. the investigative section that deals with drug, weapons and human trafficking, cyber crime, customs crimes, financial fraud, smuggling and terrorism.
ICE hit the headlines especially under the Trump presidency due to the level of violence of those operating within it: since the president took office, ICE recorded more than 32,800 arrests in the first 50 days of his mandate alone (under Joe Biden, in an entire year ICE had made just over 33,000 arrests).
The violence committed by the agents is numerous, and the tactics decidedly strong: they include dawn raidthe use of masked officers without visible identifiers and civilian vehicles for surprise arrests, not to mention the use of lethal force in unnecessary situations, against defenseless citizens. Under the Trump administration, the agency expanded operations to sensitive locations (schools and hospitals), and employed technologies facial recognition and drones for urban surveillance. For all these reasons, ICE has begun to be called “Trump’s Gestapo” by the American president’s opponents (the Gestapo was the secret state police of Nazi Germany), and many web users agree, given the ferocious methods.
What’s happening in Minneapolis: reconstruction
On the morning of January 7, 2026, in a residential neighborhood of South Minneapolis some federal agents were engaged in an enforcement operation, i.e. an operational action by the police “to enforce a law”.
The victim, Renée Nicole Good, had just dropped their son off at school and, according to reports, got out of the SUV to observe what was happening on the street when ICE agents surrounded her. The woman got back into her vehicle, probably scared, trying to leave. An officer tried to force the door, and Good started the car. Precisely in those moments, the woman was hit by three gunshots fired at point-blank range by another officer.
Kristi Noem, secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (which also coordinates ICE), said that the woman was “a danger to her agents” and that “she had gotten into the car to run over one of them”. The version, later taken up by Donald Trump and other political exponents of the US right, was promptly denied by videos shot by people present on the street at the time protesting against ICE operations. The testimonies circulated on the web also attest that the officers prevented even a doctor from providing aid to the woman (not being able to get closer, they could not have known that the woman was already dead).
In the days following Good’s murder – which was compared to the well-known murder of George Floyd because, although it was carried out by the police in that case, it once again made Minneapolis the symbol of a death that reignites the conflict over the abuse of power – the “ICE Out For Good” movement (a play on words that can be translated as “goodbye ICE forever”) intensified in many American cities, with demonstrations throughout the United States calling for the elimination of this often very violent federal agency.
Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, publicly condemned the operation, telling ICE to “go away” and accusing federal agents of “creating chaos.” Congressional Democrats have called for thorough investigations,
going so far as to threaten to condition the funds (or even block them) to the Department of Homeland Security after the shooting.
The political and social debate
The issue has raised urgent questions: What is the limit of federal power, if any?
In theory, Washington can enforce federal laws with its own agents, and states cannot “block” it directly, but states can refuse to collaborate, i.e. not employ the police or leave local structures and resources at the service of federal operations. After the incident, legislative proposals also soon emerged at state level designed to limit or influence how federal agencies act (such as the use of masked agents or interventions in sensitive locations).
But Good’s case has also put a spotlight on what ICE is becoming, which in the eyes of many people is no longer just a “technical” immigration agency, but an actor of national security and internal public order with an increasingly ruthless and militarized way of doing things.
The result? A climate of growing tension especially in the outskirts of cities, where ICE is perceived by citizens as an increasingly paramilitary body, and a wave of protests from Washington to New York that show no signs of abating.
