Renee Good's family invokes KKK law against Trump admin officials - Newsweek

The family of a Minnesota woman fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has filed a sweeping civil rights lawsuit invoking a law originally passed to combat Ku Klux Klan violence, accusing senior Trump administration officials of participating in a conspiracy that led to her death.

The 149-page suit, filed in federal court Thursday, names officials including former Homeland Security Kristi Noem Secretary, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Border Czar Tom Homan, alleging that they and other immigration leaders used "Operation Metro Surge" to target Somali and Hispanic communities, and sought to intimidate those who were documenting or opposing federal immigration enforcement.

Plaintiffs say Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, was killed as she tried to drive away from agents after warning neighbors about the operation in Minneapolis in January. During a press conference Thursday, her partner, Becca Good, spoke publicly for the first time since the shooting.

"Every morning she is my first thought. I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama," Becca Good said. "Now I'll grow old without the love of my life. I don't hate the people who took her away from us, but what I want them to understand is every single day they get to look at their children and their wives and their sisters and know what they took from our family. They took a mother away from her children. They know that, and they will carry it forever."

The Trump administration has defended the federal agent's actions, stating that Good weaponized her vehicle and struck the agent before he fired his weapon. In a statement to Newsweek Thursday White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the administration would "vigorously defend these baseless civil lawsuits."

“The Trump administration views the deaths of countless innocent Americans at the hands of criminal illegal aliens as a tragedy that should warrant equal coverage from the mainstream media who choose to ignore these victims of illegal alien crime," Bis said.

Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment Thursday morning. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal law enacted during Reconstruction to combat organized campaigns of violence and intimidation against newly freed Blacks and their allies.

The act allows civil litigation against conspiracies that deprive people of equal protection under the law, with one provision specifically referencing people who go "in disguise on the highway" to deprive others of equal protection.

The plaintiffs argue the law applies in 2026 because masked federal agents allegedly carried out discriminatory enforcement actions and because Good's killing furthered an effort to intimidate observers and targeted communities.

"Congress enacted [the law] to address precisely this scenario: the acts of individuals who ride the public roads with their facescovered, to strip a despised group of the equal protection of the laws, and conspiracies to accomplish the same," the complaint, filed in the U.S. District of Minnesota, read.

The new filings are the latest effort to sue the Trump administration over its sweeping immigration enforcement efforts, with the same law firm representing Good's family recently pursuing legal action against agents involved in the raids in Illinois under Operation Midway Blitz.

The lawsuit opens with a description of the events of January 7. It says Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, dropped her son at school, drove home through her neighborhood, and stopped her car in the middle of Portland Avenue, where federal agents were operating.

Good honked her car horn to warn her neighbors, the complaint said, and her partner got out of the vehicle and started to film while Good stayed behind the wheel.

While Renee Good was not the target of the operation, multiple unmarked vehicles stopped around her car, the complaint alleged, including one driven by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.

After passing Good, Ross allegedly got out of his car and circled her vehicle while filming, at which point Good spoke to him: "That’s fine dude. I’m not mad at you. I’m not mad at any of you," she was heard saying on video.

As other agents pulled up, she allegedly waved them around and told them to "just go around," but instead the agents told her to get out of the car.

The plaintiffs said Good turned her wheels away from Ross and began to move forward, at which point they allege that he stepped sideways before drawing his weapon and firing a shot at the bottom left of her windshield, the complaint said.

As Good turned her car in "its slow turn away from him," the filing said, Ross allegedly fired two more rounds through her open driver's side window, one of which hit her left temple.

"As her car careened out of control down Portland Avenue and crashed into a parked car, Ross cursed, 'fucking bitch,'" the complaint alleged, adding that no federal agent rendered aid to her and denied a doctor's attempt to reach her.

The complaint describes how Becca Good was beside the front passenger door when Ross allegedly fired his gun.

"She ran down the street after Renee’s car and found her partner bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head," the complaint read. "Becca has suffered immensely as a result of the unlawful shooting and killing of her partner, and she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder."

The lawsuit does not just target the federal agent accused of killing Good. It also lists Trump administration officials, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan, as defendants.

According to the complaint, Miller, a key architect of President Donald Trump's immigration policies across both terms, repeatedly defined the Minnesota operation as being about a specific ethnic group—those of Somali heritage, largely due to the alleged fraud under investigation in the state at the time.

The plaintiffs allege that Miller directed operations in the Twin Cities through daily calls with Noem and then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, telling them to dispatch agents to "force confrontations" with people observing and protesting the operation, such as Good.

Noem is accused of pushing policies at DHS that allowed the agents working the operation to keep their faces covered, and of carrying out enforcement in a way that could be a "filmed spectacle," the complaint said. The former secretary was also accused of embedding conservative social media influencers into field operations to document what was happening.

Homan was included in the lawsuit because he was "the public architect" of the sweeping citywide operations, the complaint said, with the filing quoting Homan promising to "flood the zone" when referring to sanctuary cities.

After Good, and later Alex Pretti, were fatally shot in Minneapolis, Homan was the public face of the efforts to ease tensions. He worked with local and state officials, eventually withdrawing hundreds of agents from the region.

Trump previously spoke on Good's death, saying in an interview with CBS News January 13, "I love all of our people... and I would bet you that she, under normal circumstances, was a very solid, wonderful person — but her actions were pretty tough.

"I’ve seen it many ways… the bottom line is we have hundreds of thousands of murderers in our country, killers, ICE is trying to get them out… their job is being made very difficult… when you look at the way that car was pulled away… there are a couple versions of that tape that are very very bad.”

The other lawsuit was filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act and lists only the U.S. as the defendant.

The 32-page filing removes the conspiracy allegations, instead focusing on seeking damages from the government for wrongful death, battery, false imprisonment, negligence and emotional distress.

FTCA filings are used to seek the prosecution of federal agents who are often granted immunity from lawsuits if their conduct is considered part of their official duties. The claim filed Thursday argues that Ross and other agents breached their official duties.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, attorney Antonio Romanucci said he was confident in the two complaints and their legal standing, adding that he would expect the judge who takes up the cases to be impartial, while Good's brother called for justice.

"I stand here with fierce determination to do what is right for my sister, for her children, and for our country—and that is to insist on accountability," Brent Ganger, Renee Good’s brother, said in a press release Thursday. "What happened to her on January 7th and what has happened to far too many people in the last year is not what America is about. We can and must do better, and the Constitution must be the road map back to decency and the rule of law."

Update 10/1/26, 3:12 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the White House.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.