The killing of Renee Good was not a tragedy born of confusion. It was the predictable outcome of a system designed to intimidate, dominate, and dehumanize.
ICE did not make a “mistake.”
ICE did exactly what it has been structured, trained, and politically rewarded to do.
A U.S. citizen, a mother, a human being, was killed during a federal operation she was not the target of, in a community already under siege by militarized immigration enforcement. Within hours, federal officials rushed to justify her death—casting her as a threat, invoking “self-defense,” even floating the grotesque language of “domestic terrorism.” This rhetorical playbook is familiar. When state violence is exposed, the narrative machine activates.
Blame the victim.
Elevate fear.
Erase humanity.
ICE’s defenders want the public to believe this was about safety. But safety does not require 2,000-agent raids in residential neighborhoods. Safety does not require guns drawn on civilians in cars. Safety does not require blocking medical aid after a shooting. Safety does not require lying when the video tells a different story.
This was not safety.
This was power.
ICE Is Functioning as Designed
It is tempting—especially for moderates and institutional loyalists—to frame Renee Good’s killing as an aberration. A rogue agent. A breakdown in protocol. A tragedy that demands “reform.”
That framing is dishonest.
ICE was created in the post-9/11 era as a domestic enforcement arm fueled by fear, racial profiling, and the logic of permanent emergency. Its mandate is not care, due process, or community well-being. Its mandate is removal—by force if necessary. Over time, that mandate has metastasized into a culture where aggression is normalized, accountability is rare, and civilian lives are treated as acceptable collateral.
When an agency repeatedly terrorizes communities, escalates encounters, and kills people who pose no clear threat, the problem is not oversight. The problem is existence.
The Language of Justification Is Violence Too
Calling Renee Good’s killing “self-defense” is not a legal clarification—it is a moral distortion. It weaponizes language to shield the state from scrutiny while preemptively criminalizing the dead.
This tactic matters.
When officials label victims as threats, they are not merely explaining events; they are disciplining the public. They are signaling that anyone can be retroactively stripped of innocence if their death becomes inconvenient. That message lands hardest on immigrants, people of color, activists, and anyone who already lives under disproportionate surveillance.
If the state can kill first and narrate later, no one is safe.
Abolition Is Not Extremism
Opposing ICE does not mean opposing humanity, borders, or law. It means rejecting a system that has proven—again and again—that it cannot exist without violence.
A society that claims to value human life cannot maintain agencies that operate with impunity. A democracy that claims legitimacy cannot accept federal forces killing civilians and then rewriting reality to excuse it.
Abolition is not about chaos.
It is about refusing to normalize brutality.
Renee Good should be alive. Her children should have their mother. Her name should not be a footnote in a press release designed to protect federal power.
Justice, in this case, does not begin with an internal review or a carefully worded apology. It begins with truth—and with the courage to say that ICE, as it exists today, is incompatible with human rights.
Silence enables this violence.
Reform excuses it.
Abolition confronts it.
And that confrontation is long overdue.
The Humane Herald 