On 7 January Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Multiple news outlets are now reporting that Native Americans are being profiled and targeted in what are supposed to be ‘immigration raids’.
What ICE is and what they do
According to the US government’s own website, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is “responsible for investigating a wide range of domestic and international activities arising from the illegal movement of people, goods and contraband into, within, and out of the United States”.
It has also been reported that ICE sees their work as involving both national security and public safety and. That said, ICE has civil immigration enforcement powers that differ from local police, with federal authority to detain people suspected of immigration violations.
Agents have the power to stop, detain and arrest anyone that they suspect of being in the US illegally. They can also “detain US citizens in limited circumstances, such as if a person interferes with an arrest, assaults an officer, or ICE suspects the person of being in the US illegally”.
It has also been recorded that there were over 170 incidents during the first nine months of Trump’s presidency in which legitimate US citizens were held against their will, by ICE agents, including American citizens they had suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
The killing of Renee Good
ICE have gained further notoriety since the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of a six-year old son in Minneapolis, on 7 January.
The following day, it was reported that Good’s wife, Rebecca Good, had spoken to the Washington Post and said that Renee and herself had stopped to “support neighbours when she was shot by the ICE agent, who has been identified as Jonathan Ross”.
The spot where the ICE agent had shot and killed Renee Good, 37, the previous day has become the site of a memorial.
The killing of Good sparked a wave of protests across the US and on 10 January, came news that more than $1.5 million had been raised by a GoFundMe fundraiser for the family of Renee.
It was additionally reported that Renee had been shot and killed as she “sat behind the wheel of her car in a residential neighbourhood by immigration officer Jonathan Ross. He fired three times at Ms Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and mum-of-three, who was not the target of the operation and had tried to drive her SUV away from the scene”
Family seeks answers after ICE deports man to Costa Rica in vegetative state
In another ICE-related scandal it was reported on 11 January that the family of a man from Costa Rica were still urgently seeking answers about what had happened to him, while he was in ICE custody. He was said to have been deported from the United States in a vegetative state and died shortly after arriving back in Costa Rica.
It was further noted that “Randall Gamboa Esquivel had left Costa Rica in good health and crossed the United States-Mexico border in December 2024, according to his family. However, Gamboa was detained by the US authorities for re-entering American soil unlawfully, as he had previously lived there undocumented between 2002 and 2013”.
ICE targeting Native Americans
In another twist to the story of how ICE are conducting themselves, reports have also emerged that they are targeting Native Americans, those whose families have quite possibly lived on U.S. soil for generations.
News emerged on 9 January that just blocks away from where Renee Good was shot and killed, at least five Native American men had been detained as part of what a top official called the “largest immigration raid ever.”. An unknown number were also said to have been questioned by immigration officers across the Minneapolis area.
Little Crow Belcourt, White Earth Ojibwe and the director of the Indigenous Peoples Movement commented: “I think some of them [ICE] don’t even know what they’re doing or where they’re at. They’re just pulling people over at random, if you’re Brown. Some of our Native (American) people get mistaken for our relatives south of the border.”
This news comes after it had been reported in November last year that Native American actress Elaine Miles, well known for her roles in Smoke signal and on Northern Exposure, announced that she had been detained by ICE agents, who were reported to have told her that her tribal ID, issued in Oregon, was “fake.”
According to the Seattle Times, Miles stated in a social media post, that she had been walking to a bus stop near the Redmond Bear Creek Village shopping Centre in Washington, to go to Target, when “four masked men in ICE-labelled vests emerged from two unmarked black SUVs and demanded her ID”.
On 8 January it was reported that a disturbing video had emerged which seemed to show a Native American man being punched repeatedly by an ICE agent even after he had complied with the officer.
It was further reported that Minneapolis-born Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez, had been detained by ICE on 8 January. Raelyn Duffy, who is a member of the Red Lake Nation, was also said to have taken his passport and birth certificate to the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling, but was “turned away and hasn’t been able to see him”.
On 10 January, news emerged that The Oglala Sioux Tribe were also wanting answers after four of their members had been detained by the ICE in Minneapolis.
It was further reported that “tribal President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement on Facebook that the men, who were homeless and living near the Little Earth housing complex in Minneapolis, home to nearly 1,500 people, many of whom are Native American. The men were taken into custody without their names being recorded, the tribe said. Attorneys for the tribe have contacted Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan to determine the men’s location and confirm their identities”
The South Dakota-based tribe have gone so far as to advise members on what to do if detained and have also made it clear that they will provide enrolment records to federal authorities.
Concerns grow for Native Americans
Given all these incidents it is little wonder then that it has also been reported that concern is growing for the urban Indigenous population of Phoenix in Arizona, as more ICE agents come into the city, with the power to racially profile Native Americans given to them by the U.S. Supreme Court. There are particular concerns as Phoenix is the “third-largest U.S. city for Native American residents”.
It was also noted that incidents were already occurring which indicated that Indigenous individuals were being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, back in January 2025, when President Donald Trump signed his executive order targeting the deportation of immigrants in the country illegally.
You couldn’t make it up
Please forgive me for using such a cliched phrase, but what else can one say? Not only are ICE using force and violence as they bludgeon their way around the country, and in particular Democrat strongholds, killing people like Renee Good, but now they are targeting Native Americans.
Just how Native Americans, some of whose families have perhaps been on American soil for up to a hundred generations, can be seen as illegal immigrants is not clear.
However, what is clear is that ICE are targeting families who have been in America for many generations before the President’s mother, Mary Anne McLeod made the arduous journey from the Hebridean island of Lewis to the USA nearly one hundred years ago in 1930.
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