After an immigration officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis who federal authorities say tried to use her car as a weapon, Democrats are saying the officer used excessive and improper force.   

This break is a 180 degree turn from the attitude they had under the Obama Administration, when official policy asserted that immigration agents face “dangerous situations" that sometimes require “split-second decisions” to employ force. 

That earlier policy — lauded by Democrats — even outlined how agents were expected to react to situations where the driver of a vehicle puts an officer’s life in danger, according to memos reviewed by Just the News.  

The officer-involved shooting on Wednesday took place during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in the city. When officers ordered a woman — subsequently identified as Renee Good  — to exit her vehicle which was blocking the road, video footage shows the woman briefly reversed and then accelerated, hitting one officer. That officer fired several times into the vehicle, striking the woman. Good later died of her injuries.

ICE sees action as "defensive shots" 

New close-up footage filmed by the ICE agent who fired the shots shows that Good appears to have pointed her car towards the agent and accelerated, hitting him as he fired into the vehicle. The footage was obtained and released by Alpha News, a local Minnesota outlet. 

Jonathan Ross has been identified as the ICE agent who shot Good and took the video. Ross was also previously dragged by a vehicle in an attempted arrest of an illegal immigrant last year. After freeing himself from the vehicle and being taken to a hospital, Ross received 33 stitches, Just the News reported.  

Homeland Security Secretary Noem in a press conference on Wednesday laid out why the administration believes the use of force was justified. “This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” Noem said. The ICE agent responded by firing "defensive shots," and “used his training to save his own life and that of his colleagues,” she added. 

But, local officials, especially Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, argued on Wednesday that the video evidence released at that point clearly shows that the officer did not fire in self-defense.

Democrats insist that it wasn't self-defense

“So, they are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit,” Frey said at a press conference. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would investigate the incident in parallel to the federal investigation. So far, federal law enforcement has refused to cooperate with local officials in the probe of the shooting.  

Obama-era policy sympathetic to "split-second decisions" with moving vehicles

During the Obama administration, Customs and Border Patrol — a close partner organization of ICE, also under the Homeland Security Department umbrella — released new guidelines for agents on the use of force. The memorandum was sympathetic to the dangers that border patrol agents face every day and noted that sometimes the job requires quick decisions in “rapidly evolving” situations, sometimes necessitating use of force. 

“The dangerous situations you encounter require you to make split-second decisions in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving,” then-Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Michael J. Fisher wrote in the March 2014 memo. “U.S. Border Patrol agents are among the most frequently assaulted law enforcement personnel in the country.” 

The memo shows that in 2014, the chief at the time also issued a new directive on the use of force in incidents involving the driver of a vehicle. “In accordance with CBP’s Use of Force policy, agents shall not discharge their firearms at a moving vehicle unless the agent has reasonable belief, based on the totality of the circumstances that deadly force is being used against an agent or another person present.” The memo adds that “[Such] deadly force may include a moving vehicle aimed at agents or others present, but would not include a moving vehicle fleeing from agents.” 

Later, under the Biden administration, the guidelines have been superseded by further instructions, the latest of which were promulgated in 2023. Homeland Security’s standards for the use of force track closely with that earlier iteration. 

Justifying deadly force under Biden

“LEOs may use force only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that is objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting the LEO at the time force is applied,” the newer guidelines, issued by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, explain.

Courts determine whether an officer’s use of force was justified according to the objective reasonableness standard in Fourth Amendment case law and is decided on a case by case basis. 

The newer memo further explains that deadly force may be used “only when necessary, that is when the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO or to another person.” 

Former federal agents told Just the News that, based on the video evidence, the shooting will likely be ruled a justified use of force by investigators. “In my mind, when I saw this, I immediately said, ‘justified shooting,’” Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI special agent, Navy SEAL, and federal air marshal, told Just the News on Wednesday. 

Art Del Cueto, Border Security Advisor at the Federation for American Immigration Reform and a former border patrol agent with more than 20 years of service, agreed that the shooting would likely be ruled as justified.

He said investigators usually look for three things when determining whether a use of deadly force was justified: “Did [the suspect] have the means? Did they have the intent, and did they have the 'opportunity' to put officers in harm's way?" 

“I think all those three things have been met when they were attacking a federal agent,” Del Cueto told Just the News on Wednesday. 

State charges against officer still possible

Del Cueto added that it is possible that local or state authorities may bring charges against the agent, using their own interpretation of the facts in the case. “Knowing their political leanings, they're now going to be able to indict, they're going to be able to say, ‘hey, there's enough evidence there to form a bigger case,’ and then you don't know how long that case is going to sit on their desk,” Del Cueto said. 

“So, in a situation like this, it could very well put this agent in what we call the rubber gun squad, which means he'll be sitting there waiting for local authorities to finish their case, and that whole time he won't be out in the field. So this could be a very worn out and long process.”

Officer's "immunity" under debate, but a judge's opinion is the one that counts

A state prosecution of the ICE agent for the shooting is possible, but would be complicated. Though Vice President J.D. Vance insisted that federal law enforcement officials have “absolute immunity,” some experts say that this is not the case. 

Social media is for the moment, a dust storm of thousands of people insisting that Ross does not have immunity. An article from self-described progressive outlet American Prospect saying "the law clearly stipulates that federal agents do not have universal immunity" has been widely circulated as authoritative. 

"Officers are not entitled to absolute immunity as a matter of law,” said Timothy Sini, a former federal prosecutor in New York, told CNN. Sini added that if the federal agent is charged in the state, he can seek to move the matter to federal court and raise immunity arguments. 

The federal judge would then have to conduct a two-part test to determine if the officer enjoys immunity for the action. The judge first determines whether the agent was acting as part of his official duties. Next, the judge will assess whether the action was reasonable based on the circumstances on the ground, he told CNN. 

“At every step of the way, (reasonableness is) essentially what you’re determining,” Sini told the outlet. “And what is objectively reasonable under the particular circumstances is evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene and turns on those facts known to the officer at the precise moment.”