The death of an apparently innocent woman at the hands of immigration police does no favors to the split plaguing American society<\/p>\n
Is it becoming impossible to protest the US government as specifically protected by the First Amendment without being branded a domestic terrorist, or worse, killed? That is what many fear is happening following the violent death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a stay-at-home mother of three, in the US city of Minneapolis.
\nOn January 7, Good was blocking a neighborhood street inside of her SUV before being approached by two ICE agents. The video shows one of the officers jostling with the door handle, demanding that the woman get out of the vehicle. Instead of exiting the car, Good went briefly in reverse and then lurched forward in an apparent attempt to flee the scene. At this point, another officer, identified as Jonathan Ross, drew his revolver and fired two bullets into the windshield of the moving SUV, striking Good in the head. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
\nAt this point, nothing makes sense about this \u2018police stop\u2019, which wasn\u2019t your typical police stop at all. As is clearly seen in the video, the first officer does not attempt to speak to the woman to understand why her car is parked sideways on the road. Perhaps she is having car problems, we don\u2019t know and, apparently, he doesn\u2019t either (media has since confirmed that Good belonged to ICE Watch, a loose group of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city). Instead, he grabs the door handle while hollering at the woman to get out of the car. As anybody who has been through a police stop knows, that is not how they are supposed to work. People are usually terrified when getting confronted by the police, thus it is essential that the officer make some sort of communication with the driver, asking for a driver\u2019s license and registration as the most obvious way. Under normal circumstances, the officer will go back to his vehicle to check the information.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
US immigration agent fatally shoots woman (VIDEO)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the woman was, to say the least, unwise to attempt to flee from a federal officer. The best thing she could have done was to comply with the officer and get out of the vehicle and then get in touch with a lawyer. With that said, however, it did not appear that the woman had any intention to run over the officers. It appears that her intention was to flee arrest, which does not warrant lethal force on the part of the police. While it\u2019s easy to play \u2018Monday morning quarterback\u2019, it appears that the second officer, who was standing in front of the vehicle, was not in any danger of being run over. Judging by the video, the SUV had already passed by him before he fired two shots at the driver.
\nWhat is unfortunate about all of this is that the Trump administration \u2013 and Trump himself \u2013 wasted no time pinning blame on the driver of the car. Worse, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem portrayed the victim, a mother of three and award-winning poet, as a \u201cdomestic terrorist.\u201d\u00a0Good, Noem said without providing any evidence, had been \u201cstalking and impeding\u201d ICE officers before \u201cweaponizing her vehicle\u201d in an effort to run over the agent who shot her.
\nThe game of victim-blaming did not end there. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and a spokesperson for ICE, declared in a post on X that \u201cone of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them \u2013 an act of domestic terrorism.\u201d
\nSeveral ICE officers were injured, she insisted, when videos of the shooting proved that claim to be categorically false.
\nThis is a very dark day in America when average citizens \u2013 soccer moms no less \u2013 are declared \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d before any investigation into their \u2018crimes\u2019 has even started. The dead mother was not engaged in violent protesting, unless we have reached the point when blocking traffic with one\u2019s automobile can be considered a terrorist act worthy of losing one\u2019s life over. That\u2019s why it\u2019s crucial to wait for an in-depth investigation before jumping to conclusions. What is disturbing, however, is the way officials were tossing around explosive phrases, like \u201crioter,\u201d\u00a0\u201cdomestic terrorist,\u201d and \u201cweaponizing a vehicle\u201d less than 24 hours after the killing took place.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Trump condemns \u2018targeted attack on Christians\u2019<\/p>\n
If that middle-aged mother can be described in such a way, then every neighborhood in the US is teeming with \u2018domestic terrorists\u2019 just waiting to run over police officers with their SUVs. While it is necessary for ICE to do their thankless job of removing unwanted illegal immigrants, it is equally essential that they do so without branding your average suburban mothers as potential terrorists. The Trump authorities have to understand by now that their work is viewed as highly suspect by many Americans, mostly on the left of the political spectrum, and that emotions are off the charts.
\nThe fact is, Renee Nicole Good was not a \u2018domestic terrorist\u2019 by any stretch of the imagination, and to suggest that she was undermines all of the liberties that Americans have fought for over the years, including the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom to address the government for perceived wrongs. Unless Americans can protest controversial activities by their government without fear of being killed, the notion that America is a country of laws will exist as simply the greatest fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The death of an apparently innocent woman at the hands of immigration police does no favors to the split plaguing American society Is it becoming impossible to protest the US…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t