Two thousand federal agents descended on Minneapolis on Jan. 6, 2026, an urban occupation framed as the “largest immigration operation ever.” By the next morning, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was dead, fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross, MS NOW reported.
In the shadows of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation blitz, a lethal pattern has emerged. Since July, immigration agents have shot at least six people behind the wheel of a vehicle (two of them fatal, including Wednesday’s shooting). In each instance, the playbook is the same: the agent claims self-defense, asserting they “feared for their life” as a vehicle was “weaponized” against them.
In every instance, the playbook is the same: the agent claims self-defense, asserting they “feared for their life” as a vehicle was “weaponized” against them.
Yet the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy, which ICE is bound by, suggests agents are directed not to fire upon moving vehicles except in instances where deadly force is authorized. But the policy forbids the use of deadly force unless agents have a “reasonable belief” of an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Crucially, the policy cautions agents to avoid “unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.”
Whether the use of lethal force in this case was lawful or unlawful should be decided by a jury in a civil damages case (and perhaps also a criminal prosecution of the agent who pulled the trigger, if warranted by the facts). But for the victims of constitutional violations by federal agents, the courthouse doors are effectively bolted shut.
While the facts of Good’s death are still being determined, the DHS machinery is already in motion, churning out a narrative of “domestic terrorism” to sanitize the killing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation,” while DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed Good “weaponized her vehicle” to run over officers.
It’s a familiar script.
McLaughlin used the exact same phrase to describe Carlitos Ricardo Parias’ conduct last October. Mr. Parias was charged with assaulting federal agents — accused of ramming law enforcement vehicles — leading federal agents to open fire on him in Los Angeles. Parias survived, and last month, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin dismissed the indictment against him with prejudice, due to prosecutorial misconduct and flagrant constitutional violations by federal prosecutors.
Similarly, last November, a Border Patrol agent in Chicago shot Marimar Martinez. DHS immediately portrayed Martinez — who survived the shooting — as having tried to ram agents, only for their story to quickly collapse and U.S. District Judge Georgia Alexakis granted the government’s motion to dismiss assault charges once Martinez’s lawyers flagged bodycam footage which they said showed the agent steered his vehicle into Martinez’s truck.
The tragedy of the Good case is compounded by a legal regime that all but ensures federal agents remain untouchable by civil damages lawsuits. If a local police officer violates your rights, you can sue under a longstanding federal civil rights law referred to as “Section 1983.” But for misconduct by federal agents, no such statutory remedy exists. Instead, victims must rely on the Bivens Doctrine, a 1971 court precedent creating an implied right of action to sue federal officials for constitutional violations. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has since pared the doctrine down to near irrelevance.
Judges and jurors should get to determine if the agents themselves created the danger by unnecessarily stepping into the path of a moving vehicle. As a result, if Good’s surviving family members attempt to sue Ross and the agents involved in her shooting for violating her civil rights, they will almost certainly find no remedy in a courtroom. The Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to extend Bivens to immigration enforcement, often citing unfounded national security implications. Yet the Good killing occurred during street-level policing in the American heartland — a task for which ICE and Border Patrol are notoriously untrained and ill-suited. Judges and jurors should get to determine if the agents themselves created the danger by unnecessarily stepping into the path of a moving vehicle. Likewise, judges and jurors should be forced to reckon with whether stopping in the middle of the road is a transgression that justifies a death sentence. Ultimately, judges and jurors should weigh the violent choice to gun a woman down in broad daylight — letting her car plow into parked vehicles in a residential neighborhood — against the simple, professional alternative: recording a license plate, attempting to secure a warrant, and, if granted, effectuating a safe arrest at her residence. These are the common-sense questions the Framers intended for jurors to wrestle with. But these questions rarely reach a jury, because even if a litigant were able to successfully invoke the remaining sliver of Bivens liability, they hit a second wall: qualified immunity, which shields agents unless a plaintiff can identify a nearly identical prior case in the same jurisdiction. The Courts aren’t alone in this failure; Congress is equally complicit. While legislation has been introduced to expand and codify Bivens liability for rights-violating federal officials, its path to passage appears steep and unlikely. Until Congress or the courts rein in ICE and Border Patrol, federal agents will continue to operate with impunity, viewing constitutional rights as little more than a bump in the road.
Mike Fox
Mike Fox is a legal fellow with the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. 
