For the first time in the era of high-profile police killings caught on film, a federal agent under the direction of Donald Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdown is at the center of an egregious killing.
Renee Good is not the first person shot by Trump’s armed goons since they began rampaging through American communities nearly a year ago. But none of the previous shootings (and there have been nine of them since September) have provided as clear a picture of agents’ brutality, inhumanity, and unnecessary violence as the fatal shooting that took place Wednesday in Minneapolis.
By now, you probably have seen videos of Good’s killing. What they show is the inevitable result of an unaccountable law enforcement apparatus staffed by inexperienced agents whose primary qualification is a willingness to brutalize immigrants and Americans who stand in solidarity with them. Over the course of the year, ICE has lowered its standards for hiring, partly resulting in an unending parade of violence that is captured on video virtually every single day.
While Good’s killing is just the latest act of brutality carried out by Trump’s unaccountable masked thugs — what increasingly looks like the president’s personal secret police — it marks a new chapter in the decade-long tragedy of police brutality caught on film for the entire nation to witness. But what makes this police killing distinct from others in the past decade that have roiled the nation and sparked mass protests — George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and many more — is that this one has the tacit approval of the White House.
Exacerbating matters are the Trump administration’s justifications of the incident, which in more normal times would be universally condemned as an obviously unnecessary killing of an unarmed civilian. But before Good had even been identified, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem started smear her and lying about what happened.
