The family of a Minneapolis woman shot dead by an ICE agent in January filed two federal lawsuits Thursday — one against the U.S. government, and another that personally names Trump-era border officials Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan, expanding lawfare against immigration enforcement into the civil courts.
If policymakers can be hauled into court personally for a street-level agent's split-second decision, no official will enforce border law without fear of personal ruin. That is the real stakes here, and it is by design.
Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on the morning of January 7 in south Minneapolis during the Department of Homeland Security's Operation Metro Surge. Good had just dropped her 6-year-old son at school. Video from Ross's own cellphone and bystander footage show him approaching her stopped SUV on a residential street, masked, saying nothing. Good's partner, Becca Good, told Ross, "You wanna come at us?" and tried to re-enter the locked vehicle. Another agent told Good to "get out of the fking car." Good reversed, then turned the wheel right. Ross cried "whoa" and fired three shots — first through the windshield, then at close range through the open driver's side window. Bystander video shows Ross was standing out of the vehicle's path when he opened fire. Someone can be heard saying "fking b*tch" after the shots.
DHS claimed Good "weaponized her vehicle" to run over an officer and that Ross fired "defensive shots" fearing for his life. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called that narrative "bullshit," according to FOX 9.
The first lawsuit targets the United States alone under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging wrongful death, battery, assault, false imprisonment, and negligence. Under federal law, the government has up to six months to respond, and the case will be decided by a judge, not a jury.
The second suit is where the lawfare lives. It names Ross, Miller, Noem, Homan, and other Trump administration figures, plus ten John Doe agents, alleging a "conspiracy to interfere with civil rights" and what attorney Benjamin Berkman described as "a coordinated effort by the federal government to target, harass and terrorize Somali and Hispanic Minnesotans" and "silence by any means necessary" their allies. The suit alleges racial profiling and unconstitutional enforcement practices during Operation Metro Surge.
CNN and CBS both framed the suits as accountability for government overreach. CBS gave significant airtime to the attorneys' framing of "two distinct but related evils" — the shooting itself and the policy environment that put agents on that street. FOX 9 noted the competing narratives between federal officials and witnesses. None of the three outlets examined who is funding the litigation or probed whether naming Miller, Noem, and Homan serves a legal purpose or a political one.
The law firm behind the suits, Romanucci & Blandin, is a Chicago-based personal injury and civil rights practice partnered with Minneapolis-based Riach Law. Who is bankrolling this effort — and whether the goal is justice for Good or a precedent that makes border enforcement personally ruinous for any official who orders it — remains unanswered.
No criminal charges have been filed in Good's death. The Hennepin County Attorney's Office and two state agencies have already sued the Trump administration just to get access to evidence. The question now is whether civil suits against policymakers, for policy decisions, become the new weapon to make sure no one enforces immigration law at all.
