The threat of lives being turned completely upside down is no longer something we can ignore.

There is a heavy net cast across the nation, a manhunt for those who came to the U.S. in hopes of security, of safety and open arms. Instead, they are being met with aggression and brute force.

At first glance, people being kidnapped from their homes and places of work with no information given to families, shootings in the street and military-like operations in metropolitan areas seem plot points for a brand-new, sadistic thriller blockbuster. Yet, these are all simply examples of headlines you can find in today’s paper.

This painful reality is all a part of President Trump’s hateful rhetoric around immigrants and their rights as U.S. citizens. He has been promoting “building the wall” and decreasing immigration rates since his first term, however, he is pushing the envelope much farther than before.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents fall under the Department of Homeland Security. A sector of government that was formed following the terrorist attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001.

ICE’s government page states that their agents’ objectives are to “dismantle transnational criminal organizations, prevent human trafficking and drug smuggling, battle cybercrime, rescue victims of child predators, protect intellectual property rights and remove criminal non-citizens.”

So, using that language, it would be assumed that ICE taking action would be reserved for credible threats of immigrants doing illegal activities in the US. Just as all law enforcement is supposed to be reserved for.

However, just days ago, a woman in Minneapolis, MN, was shot through her driver’s-side window following an altercation with ICE agents. The woman, Renne Nicole Good, was not an immigrant, merely a 37-year-old mother who stood in the way of ICE agents and their agenda.

CNN reported that Good was in a red Honda. Her wife stood outside the car filming ICE agents trying to get past the vehicle, which was blocking the street. Many people were in the area attempting to block ICE from getting near a local school where parents feared they would be detained; it was unclear whether or not Good was directly involved with that neighborhood coalition.

Eventually, ICE officers attempted to open Good’s driver’s side door, an action which then caused her wife to instruct her to drive away, a command she obeyed.

The ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, then shot through the windshield and then again through her open driver’s side window, with a possible third shot reported as well. Subsequently, she was killed in broad daylight in front of her wife and countless bystanders.

Ross said he acted in self-defense as he was fearful of getting run-over by her car. Ross had a previous incident where he was dragged about 100 yards by a car during a similar immigration operation while on duty.

This entire incident raises the next question: why is such a violent outcome needed for someone who was not acting inherently illegally and who was in the right in this situation?

Many supporters of ICE and their initiative say Ross was merely acting in self-defense, and those who disagree with ICE claim it was cold-blooded murder.

According to the BBC, under the U.S. constitution law-enforcement is allowed to take action through force, violent or not, “if the person poses a serious danger to them or other people, or the person has committed a violent crime.”

It is clear from the video that Good and her wife were acting on the assumption that they were going to pull her out of her car and harm her, so she drove away. The ICE agent was filming her and attempting to provoke her, and then got upset when she took action to protect herself.

She felt a person was posing a danger to her, and therefore took action through force by driving away. I wonder, if ICE agents are allowed to use force in all their arrests if they feel threatened, why couldn’t she?

The way I see it, those officers had no intention of a peaceful interaction. In fact, after she was shot, it can be heard on tape an officer involved called her a “f-ing b-h.” There was no remorse, no fear of taking another human’s life, but rather what felt like pure revenge.

And this feeling of revenge seems to be wholeheartedly intertwined with the mission of ICE.

This altercation is not the first to end in a fatality, and sadly, it likely won’t be the last.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has deployed full ICE missions to cities across the US, with the primary goal being mass arrests and deportation.

Frankly, the missions have been very successful. With a reported tally of 605,000 people deported between Jan. 20 and Dec. 10, 2025, this violent increase in immigration forces in large cities has turned many residents’ lives into constant paranoia.

This is not just something happening in big cities either. When I was home for winter break, ICE detained many workers at a local restaurant near where I work. Because of this, people stopped showing up, and our restaurant nearly had to close for many days.

Those people weren’t even illegal immigrants, and yet they were still fearful that, simply based on their appearance and the sloppy, discriminatory practices of ICE agents, they would be taken away from their families.

ICE agents were never designed to be weapons of mass destruction; they were meant to regulate immigration and make sure those who came to the U.S. were following laws and protocols, and yet somehow they have turned into a military-like squad of overly confident agents with far too much leeway on how they can conduct their jobs.

The worst part of ICE is that when ICE detains someone, it essentially feels like they have been kidnapped. ICE regulations are the same as any law enforcement agency; they are supposed to read you your Miranda rights and give you access to counsel, if you so wish.

However, the many people who have been detained by ICE are extremely hard to access. To simply find someone ICE has detained, you either need their first and last name and country of origin, or their Alien registration number. But no matter how you try to locate them, the system typically takes at least two days to update.

This means that families have no idea where their loved ones are for at least two days. That feels like normalized kidnapping.

The fact is, the American Immigration Council has outlined research that shows Immigrants commit less crime than natural born citizens, so why, in light of the hundreds of other issues that are suffocating the nation, are we targeting a population that is harming the U.S. less on a grand scale? The answer: blatant xenophobia and racism.

It is painfully clear in the way the Trump administration speaks about these immigrants that they do not view them as human beings. Their nationalism bleeds bigotry and prejudice; when we must remember that, in fact, we are all descendants of immigrants, this country is built on their backs.

These are people, just like you and me, who want a safe place to live and want the opportunity to build a life for themselves. I condemn this administration’s treatment of people, criminal or not; their treatment of immigrants shows a bleak lack of humanity.

I offer condolences to the family of Renne Nicole Good, but she is not the first fatality of ICE’s regime, and again, will not be the last. While I agree in honoring her life, it is important to acknowledge that it took a white woman being killed to show people that the violence ICE is spreading affects us all, no matter citizen status.

We need to continue to push back and urge lawmakers to fight against the Trump administration and its policies. For the people who came before us, we need to remember that the majority of people being detained or killed by ICE are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles; not criminals.