ICE enforcement escalates after Minneapolis killing, sparking S.F. protests

Anti-ICE protests marked the beginning of 2026, with hundreds of San Francisco residents joining demonstrations after Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent on the morning of Jan. 7.

Good, a 37-year-old mother, spouse and poet, was idling in her car at the scene of a targeted ICE operation when agents instructed her to move her vehicle. Authorities and witnesses have offered conflicting accounts of her role at the scene, with some reports describing her as a legal observer and others saying she was simply present at the scene. 

“That person could have been any of us,” said Sully Atheirne, an organizer with the Northern Californian chapter of Refuse Fascism. “It could have been my friends out here, it could have been me driving to an ICE protest.”

Francisco Herrera, co-director of Nuevo Sol Day Labor and Domestic Worker Center, compared the killing to intimidation tactics used by authoritarian governments in Latin America. “This was a public execution for us,” Herrera said. “[It’s] within plan to traumatize and paralyze a population.”

That framing was echoed by Sanika Mahajan, director of community engagement and organizing at Mission Action, who described the shooting as a “lawless act of murder.”

“It’s the result of a supercharged environment of extreme racism,” Mahajan said. “Trump wants to divide [us] along racial lines, along national lines, and stop us from coming together to form a united front.”

Good is the fifth person reported to have been killed during encounters involving ICE agents in the past six months, but not the first to be shot at. Data collected by the Gun Violence Archive and analyzed by The Trace shows increased use of firearms during immigration operations, with a notable uptick in reported shootings during the latter half of 2025.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem characterized Good as a “domestic terrorist”, accusing her of “weaponiz[ing] her vehicle and attempt[ing] to run a law enforcement officer over,” prompting the agent to fire “defensive shots.”

“We’re not going to give into terrorism,” Vice-President J.D. Vance posted on his official X account. “We cannot say that when a far-left fringe is inciting violence against our brave law enforcement officials, that we’re no longer going to enforce the law.”

Witness accounts and video footage of the shooting, however, contradict those characterizations. One witness recorded five ICE agents approaching Good’s vehicle. The agent in question, later identified as 43-year-old deportation officer Jonathan Ross, can be seen standing to the left of the car, whose front wheels were turned to the right — before firing three shots at close range, striking Good in the chest and arm.

“They have to lie,” said Atheirne in response to official statements. “Their only strength is their violence.”

Another video, recorded by Ross on his phone, shows him walking around the front of the vehicle and standing to the side as Good began to drive. While Ross was bumped by the vehicle and reportedly suffered internal injuries, few details about the extent of those injuries have been made public. After reviewing footage from multiple angles, several law enforcement experts told national outlets that Good did not appear to be attempting to hit the agent. 

Experts also raised questions about Ross’s actions, including why he was filming with his phone during the encounter and why he crossed so closely in front of a moving vehicle, as well as the training ICE agents receive. 

Videos circulated in the days following Good’s death show immigration agents tackling and chemically gassing students and staff at Minneapolis Roosevelt High School, as well as firing tear gas, pepper balls and stun grenades at protesters. The footage raised further questions about whether field agents are adhering to ICE policies that prioritize de-escalation. 

Those concerns were reinforced by a recent NBC News report that an error within ICE’s recruiting process allowed an unknown number of untrained officers to be deployed to the field. According to the report, applicants’ resumés are scanned by an AI tool and sorted based on law enforcement experience. Applicants with prior careers in law enforcement undergo a four-week online training session, while those with no experience attend an eight-week training course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). 

The AI tool, however, was programmed to look for the word “officer” without evaluating context, failing to distinguish between titles such as “house officer” and “police officer.” As a result, a number of inexperienced recruits were placed on active duty with minimal training and no in-person instruction. Officials said those officers are now being identified and sent to the training center. 

Despite increasing tension between Minneapolis residents and immigration agents, DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin announced on Jan. 12 that the department would deploy an additional 1,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents to Minnesota, joining the 2,000 ICE agents already sent to the state as part of a December operation known as “Operation Metro Surge”. 

At a press conference the same day, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the state, along with Illinois, had filed a lawsuit seeking to block the deployment of additional agents and remove the rest from the state. The lawsuit names Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino, ICE, DHS and other agencies and officials as defendants. 

Filed on the grounds that the surge in federal agents — and their conduct with the public — violates the First and Tenth Amendments, the lawsuit describes “Operation Metro Surge” as “an unprecedented deployment of federal immigration enforcement agents… [that] has instilled fear among people living, working and visiting the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metro area.”

The suit further accuses the administration of sending such a large federal force into the state in order “to punish political opponents and score partisan points” under the pretext of investigating fraud.  

Local and national organizers said the killing intensified their efforts.“I can definitely say that the murder has awoken a sleeping giant in the American people,” reflected Mahajan. “It’s a critical movement to keep building, it’s a critical moment to bring more people in and show what’s possible when we have millions in the streets.” 

Organizations including Indivisible and 50501 continue to organize weekly demonstrations in San Francisco and the Bay Area alongside smaller local activist groups. 

The next national action, the “Free America Walkout,” organized by Women’s March, is scheduled for Jan. 20 and calls for a mass walkout of students and workers from schools and workplaces. Women’s March described the action as a “protest and a promise,” adding: “In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.”