On January 7, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old writer and poet, was fatally shot three times by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A day earlier, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had announced what it called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, sending 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area.
According to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and United States Representative Ilhan Omar, Good was acting as a legal observer of ICE’s activities at the time of her encounter with Ross. But Good’s ex-husband said that she had dropped her son off at school and was on her way home with her partner “when they came upon a group of ICE agents.”
Good was in her SUV, stopped sideways in the street when Ross drove his SUV around her car. He stopped ahead of her, began recording video, and stepped out with his face covered. Ross recorded Good’s face and rear license plate. Good stated: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”
Good’s partner, Becca Good, standing behind their SUV, told the agent: “Hey, show your face, Big Boy. Show your face. That’s OK. We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. This will be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That’s fine. US citizen, former fucking veteran, disabled veteran.”
Other agents approached, and one repeatedly yelled, “Get out of the fucking car!” as he reached through her open window.
Renee Good
Ross moved to the front-left of the vehicle as Good briefly reversed, then began driving into the direction of traffic while turning away from Ross. While remaining upright, Ross fired three shots, killing her: one through the windshield, then two through the open driver’s side window from the side of her vehicle as it passed him.
He later drove away from the scene.
The SUV continued down the street until crashing into a parked car and light pole. An agent’s voice captured on Ross’ body camera shouted, “Fucking bitch!”
Some have speculated that Good died because she and her partner had refused to show fear or even anger toward Ross, and this may have enraged him.
Those who lust for power over others demand deference, if not subservience. And when it’s not forthcoming, they can only respond with violence.
This is best illustrated in a work of fiction: The 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. It’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: Our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
* * * * *
Throughout his life, Donald Trump has relied on intimidation to gain his ends. And his private police-army, ICE, well understands the power of fear it holds over most people.
What he, and they, cannot understand—and truly fear—is that some people cannot be frightened. They can only be killed.
People like Renee Good.
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A GOOD TIME FOR AMERICANS TO READ “THE MOON IS DOWN”
In History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 10, 2026 at 12:10 amWith Minnesota under siege by brutal and murderous agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this is an appropriate time to read John Steinbeck’s 1942 novel, The Moon Is Down.
Written to inspire resistance movements in occupied countries, it has appeared in at least 92 editions across the world.
It tells the story of a Norwegian village occupied by Germans in World War II.
At first the invasion goes swiftly. Wehrmacht Colonel Lanser establishes his headquarters in the house of the democratically-elected Mayor Orden.
Lanser, a veteran of World War I, considers himself a man of civility and law. But in his heart he knows that “there are no peaceful people” when their freedom has been forcibly violated.
After an alderman named Alex Morden is executed for killing a German officer, the townspeople settle into “a slow, silent waiting revenge.”
Between the winter cold and the hostility of the townspeople, the Germans become fearful and disillusioned. One night, a frightened Lieutenant Tonder asks: “Captain, is this place conquered?”
“Of course.”
“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded,” replies Tonder, hysterically. “Flies conquer the flypaper. Flies capture two hundred miles of new flypaper!”
Several nights later, Tonder knocks at the door of Molly Morden. He doesn’t realize that she nurses a deep hatred of Germans for the execution of her husband, Alex. Tonder desperately wants to escape the fury and loneliness of war. Molly agrees to talk with him, but insists that he leave and return another time.
When he returns the next evening, Molly invites him in—and then kills him with a pair of scissors.
John Steinbeck
A British plane flies over the town and drops packages of dynamite, which the townspeople hurriedly collect.
When the Germans learn about the droppings, Colonel Lanser arrests Mayor Orden and Doctor Albert Winter. As the two await their uncertain future, Orden tries to remember the speech Socrates delivered before he was put to death:
“Do you remember in school, in the Apology? Socrates says, ‘Someone will say, ‘And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?’ To him I may fairly answer, ‘There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.’”
Colonel Lanser enters the room and warns Orden: “If you don’t urge your people to not use the dynamite, you will be executed.”
And Orden replies: “Nothing can change it. You will be destroyed and driven out. The people don’t like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat.
“Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that it is so, sir.”
Explosions begin erupting throughout the town.
As Orden is led outside—to his execution—he tells Winter, quoting Socrates: “’Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius. Will you remember to pay the debt?’”
“The debt shall be paid,” replies Winter—meaning that resistance will continue.
On January 6-7, 2026, President Donald Trump flooded Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota with about 2,000 thuggish ICE agents.
During his 2024 campaign for President, Trump had promised—warned—that he would pursue “retribution” against those he believed had wronged him.
One of those was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who had dared to run against him as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential pick. Making Minnesota an even more attractive target for him was the state’s large Somali population, whom he had publicly labeled “garbage.”
ICE agents
Chad Davis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
But then the unexpected happened: Minnesota residents began a wholesale resistance to ICE efforts to arrest—and often brutalize—their immigrant friends and neighbors.
Minnesotans used whistles and encrypted chats to follow and document ICE activity. Starting in December, 2025, hundreds of people signed up for ICE observation training at a church in Uptown. Such trainings are now common.
The ICE killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti steeled Minnesotans to turn out in even greater numbers to protest their occupiers. At great personal risk, motorists followed ICE agents’ vehicles and photographed their assaults on illegal aliens—and American citizens.
“In one city—in one city we have this outrage and this powder keg happening,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News. “And it’s not right. And it doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
Gregory Bovino, commanding “Operation Metro Surge,” noted: “They’ve got some excellent communications.”
In turn, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch criminal investigations into Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. They are accused of impeding federal immigration enforcement through public criticisms of ICE.
Trump-–like Adolf Hitler-–believes that power flows from the top down. He believes that if he “takes out” leaders like Walz and Frey, opposition to his rule will collapse.
He can’t understand—and cope with—a bottom-up movement driven by constituents, who—like the citizens in The Moon Is Down—have emboldened their leaders to stand their ground.
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