Buss: Response to Minneapolis shooting a moral failure

If another civil war were to break out in the United States, I imagine it would begin with an altercation similar to what took place in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

That’s what made the instantaneous and pejorative response to it by the Trump administration so jarring.

In an incident that recalls the National Guard shooting of student anti-war protesters at Kent State University in 1970, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and a mother of three. She had seemingly interjected herself into a major immigration enforcement operation that dispatched 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis at the direction of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

There is a dispute over whether the shooting was in self-defense, and the Trump administration has doubled down on defending the actions of the ICE officer, labeling Good a “domestic terrorist.” Vice President JD Vance alleged on Thursday that Good was part of a left-wing network.

But it’s hard to see the incident as anything other than a complete breakdown in moral clarity about responsibility and the limits of force by the government — and how it is discussed publicly before information could even be known.

Video shared online of the incident, allegedly taken by the officer involved, indicates the confrontation was already off to a bad start. Is filming, easily interpreted as a form of intimidation by law enforcement, standard training for ICE officers?

The ICE removal officer has been identified as Jonathan Ross, a former Army National Guard machine gunner and ex‑Border Patrol agent with extensive experience. He had been dragged by a suspect during a 2025 arrest.

Perhaps he should not have returned to active duty so quickly. The impetus is on law enforcement, whether police officers or ICE officers, to preserve life and contain an unruly and even reckless situation to the best of their ability.

Filming a potential suspect before a government-sanctioned interaction and then physically circling her vehicle to put oneself in danger calls his judgment into question.

Many questions remain about the confrontation, and no doubt instinctual psychology played a larger role in Good’s actions and in Ross’s than we will ever know.

But the immediate, callous response of Noem and Vance to this tragedy is part of a growing pattern of disregard for the collateral damage caused by implementing difficult, controversial policies. This cowboy culture that is causing serious division and violence on the nation’s streets needs to be called out and off.

Sometimes the government has to kill; it doesn’t appear that Good’s death was necessarily one of those instances. No death should ever be celebrated, or the victim castigated as a “deranged leftist,” as Vance called Good, an activist who was reportedly trained to aggressively confront ICE agents.

Despite the immediate escalation, it’s clear that while Good was driving in the opposite direction from Ross, the officer continued to shoot at her. Good lay in the driver’s seat, dying, while onlookers scream in horror. 

Such a staunch and certain defense of the totality of his actions is indefensible. 

No one — U.S. citizen or otherwise — should be gunned down on America’s streets this casually by agents of the government.

It also points to why perhaps immigration operations at the scale Noem directed in Minneapolis shouldn’t be deployed so provocatively. Such a confrontation was bound to occur.

Public safety requires restraint as much as it requires the enforcement of law and order. 

When that restraint fails, it is the duty of the heads of government to call for patience, calm and the truth — and if necessary, take some responsibility.

Americans on all sides should demand accountability for Good’s death and a renewed commitment by the Trump administration to policies and practices that were written to prevent exactly this kind of tragedy.

Kaitlyn Buss’ columns appear in The Detroit News. Reach her at kbuss@detroitnews.com and follow her on X @KaitlynBuss.