Renee Good’s family sues US, ICE officers over fatal shooting - USA Today

The family of Renee Nicole Good — the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this year — filed a sweeping civil rights lawsuit accusing senior Trump administration officials of orchestrating a discriminatory immigration operation that ultimately led to her killing.

The 149-page complaint, filed nearly nine months after Good was shot inside her SUV, names Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross along with some of the officials who oversaw the administration’s immigration enforcement campaign: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan, Corey Lewandowski, then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and 10 unidentified federal agents. Each is being sued individually.

"Our country cannot tolerate unjustified and excessive use of force, let alone deadly force, on ordinary people who are exercising their rights under the Constitution of this country," Antonio M. Romanucci, an attorney representing Good’s relatives, said during an Oct. 1 news conference. "There is no such thing as impunity when it comes to violating protected rights. When government power crosses the line, there must be accountability."

At the heart of the lawsuit is an unusual civil rights claim invoking the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Good’s family alleges the officials conspired to use Operation Metro Surge to deprive Minnesota’s Somali and Hispanic communities of equal protection under the law — and to intimidate, arrest or use force against people who observed, documented or warned others about the operation.

The complaint argues that Good’s killing on Jan. 7 was a product of that campaign. She and her partner had encountered federal agents in their south Minneapolis neighborhood after dropping her 6-year-old son off at school, according to the lawsuit. Her partner, Becca Good, got out of their SUV to film while Good remained behind the wheel and honked her horn to warn neighbors that immigration officers were nearby.

“Renee was killed in the course of conduct that served both of those objects,” the complaint alleges, arguing she was targeted while “engaged in observing and warning” about the federal operation.

The lawsuit separately accuses Ross of violating Good's Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force in fatally shooting her. It alleges Good was unarmed, suspected of no crime and slowly turning her SUV away from Ross when he fired three times — once through the windshield and twice through the open driver’s-side window. The complaint says Ross had already moved his body out of the vehicle’s path before opening fire.

The family also alleges the shooting violated mandatory Department of Homeland Security policies restricting officers from firing at the driver of a moving vehicle and from intentionally putting themselves in a vehicle’s path. After Good was shot and her SUV crashed into a parked vehicle, the complaint says, federal agents did not render medical aid and turned away a bystander who identified himself as a physician.

In a separate lawsuit, the family sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging wrongful death and assault, battery, false imprisonment and negligence. The complaint also seeks damages for the emotional harm Becca Good says she suffered from witnessing her partner’s killing.

"Every morning, she is my first thought," Becca Good said in her first public remarks. "I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama and how I will grow old without the love of my life. I think about how we should have had 40 more years together. But I also think about what she would have wanted after all of this."

"What happened to us should never happen to any family," she added.

The suits open a new front in the long-running fight over Good’s death, which was captured from several angles on video and quickly became the subject of sharply conflicting accounts from the federal government, local officials and Good’s family.

Good, a U.S. citizen, was not the target of the immigration operation underway that Jan. 7 morning

Federal agents were deployed across the Minneapolis area as part of Operation Metro Surge, a massive immigration enforcement operation that brought roughly 2,000 additional officers to Minnesota and followed similar enforcement surges in other Democratic-led cities under Noem.

The operation had already drawn fierce opposition from state and local officials, who accused the Trump administration of singling out Minnesota and other Democratic jurisdictions for aggressive federal enforcement. The administration said the deployments were necessary to enforce immigration law in places where local officials would not cooperate with federal authorities.

Good and her partner had stopped near federal agents working in their south Minneapolis neighborhood when they approached her SUV. Video shows officers ordering Good out of the vehicle before she reversed and then began driving forward. Ross, who was standing near the front driver’s side of the SUV, fired three shots.

Noem said Ross fired "defensive shots," arguing Good had tried to use her vehicle as a weapon against him. She said Good was engaged in an act of "domestic terrorism." 

But the circumstances surrounding the shooting were disputed almost immediately. Videos from the scene showed Good turning the steering wheel as she accelerated and did not clearly establish whether the Good's van struck Ross.

The killing, as well as the subsequent fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents Raymundo Gutierrez and Jesus Ochoa, sparked widespread protests and became a flashpoint in the Trump administration's push for mass deportations.

An independent autopsy commissioned by Good’s family later found three gunshot paths: one through her left forearm, another through the right side of her chest and a third that entered near her left temple and exited the other side of her head. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner classified her death as a homicide, a designation indicating she died at the hands of another person but not, by itself, a determination that a crime occurred.

Hennepin County prosecutors, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the state attorney general’s office continued investigating and eventually sued the federal government for access to evidence, including Good’s SUV, videos, witness interviews and records related to the officers involved.

After months of resistance, federal authorities turned over hard drives containing previously withheld evidence in July, along with Good’s bullet-damaged SUV. State investigators said at the time that they had begun reviewing the material and had not prejudged whether criminal charges were warranted.

Good’s family retained Chicago-based firm Romanucci & Blandin days after her death. The law firm, which also represented George Floyd’s family, launched its own civil investigation and sent the federal government a preservation letter seeking records, video, communications and physical evidence related to the shooting.

Her brother, Brent Ganger, brought the lawsuit as trustee for her next of kin, including her three children, parents and siblings. Becca Good is also a plaintiff in her own right. She was standing feet from the SUV when Ross fired and ran after the vehicle after the shooting, finding her partner with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the complaint. The lawsuit says she has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and insomnia.

The family is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, with the amount to be determined at trial.

Suing federal law enforcement officers presents legal obstacles that generally do not exist in cases against local police. Claims against the federal government can proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives federal immunity for certain wrongdoing by government employees but imposes procedural limits and does not allow punitive damages or jury trials. Lawsuits seeking damages directly from federal officers for alleged constitutional violations have also been sharply restricted by a series of Supreme Court decisions.

In the months since her death, Good’s family has tried to make sure she is remembered for more than the circumstances of her killing. Her brothers, Luke and Brent Ganger, testified before Congress in February, describing their sister as a devoted mother who was “unapologetically hopeful.”

“Her children were and are her heart walking around outside her body,” Brent Ganger said, reading from the eulogy he delivered at her funeral. “And she made sure they felt safe, valued, and endlessly loved.”

Her parents later described a daughter who loved sparkles, laughter and celebrations and had recently begun working as a substitute teacher. “She was slow to anger, quick to love, quick to care,” her father, Tim Ganger, told the Associated Press. “That’s the essence of who she was.”