Renee Good's Family Files Two Federal Lawsuits Over Her Fatal Shooting by an ICE Officer, Naming the Officer and Top Trump Officials

Three Shots, Two Lawsuits, One Dead Woman

Renee Good was 37 years old, sitting in the driver's seat of her Honda Pilot in south Minneapolis, when ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot her three times. She died on Jan. 7, 2026^[3]. Nearly nine months later, on Oct. 1, 2026, her family filed two federal lawsuits over her death^[2][5].

The shooting happened during Operation Metro Surge, a large Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement push across Minnesota^[1][3]. Federal officials said Good drove her vehicle at Ross and that he fired back in self-defense^[7]. Her family's lawyers dispute that Ross was ever in the car's path when he fired^[7]. That single disagreement about a few seconds sits underneath everything that's happened since.

Ross has not been charged with any crime. Local and federal authorities say the investigation is still open^[2]. He remains on administrative duty^[3][8].

Two Suits, Two Very Different Targets

The family's lawyers, from the Chicago firm Romanucci & Blandin along with Minnesota attorney Kevin Riach, filed the first suit against only the United States government^[2][5]. It's a wrongful-death claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that lets people sue the federal government itself when its employees cause harm^[2][3]. A judge, not a jury, will decide that case, and the family had to file an initial claim with the government first, a process that can take up to six months before it even reaches court^[2].

The second suit is far more pointed. It names Ross directly, along with seven current or former federal officials: Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Tom Homan, Todd Lyons, Gregory Bovino, and unnamed federal agents^[3]. This one alleges excessive force, and it also invokes something unusual: the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871^[2][4].

That law was written by Congress to stop masked groups from using violence to strip Black citizens of their rights^[1][13]. One section lets people sue anyone who conspires to deny others equal protection under the law. To win, the family has to prove the officials actually agreed on a plan, and that bias against a group drove it. The suit claims that bias targeted Somali and Hispanic Minnesotans swept up in Metro Surge^[13]. That's also why names like Miller and Noem appear in a lawsuit about a shooting they weren't anywhere near. The claim isn't that they pulled a trigger. It's that the operation itself was built on a plan they knew would violate people's rights.

What Nobody Disputes, and What Everyone Does

Some facts aren't in question. Good was shot and killed by Ross on Jan. 7, 2026, during Metro Surge^[1][3]. She has a partner, Becca Good, and a brother, Brent Ganger, who are the plaintiffs in both suits^[18]. Ross hasn't been charged, and the investigation into him continues^[2]. The federal government, through DHS, has declined to comment on the new suits, citing the ongoing litigation^[7].

Everything else is contested. In January, Noem said Ross "followed his training, did exactly what he's been taught to do in that situation^[7]." DHS said Good "weaponized her vehicle" and that Ross suffered internal bleeding after it struck him^[7][8]. At the time, officials called her actions "an act of domestic terrorism^[7]."

The family's account is the opposite. Romanucci says flatly, "Our government is killing our citizens without any legal justification^[2]." The family says Good had simply come upon ICE agents and stopped her car to watch^[1]. Video reviewed by outlets including Forbes and Snopes has raised its own doubts about the government's version of events, though it hasn't settled the question either way^[9][10].

A Fight Over Who Gets to See the Evidence First

Before the lawsuits came the fight over evidence. The FBI took over the investigation early on, and for a time Minnesota state investigators were shut out entirely^[11]. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and state Attorney General Keith Ellison eventually sued the federal government to get access to it^[12].

That evidence mattered because it included body-camera footage, witness statements, and the vehicle itself — the physical record that could settle whether Ross stood in the Honda's path when he fired. Federal authorities turned it over to the state in July 2026^[11][12]. No charging decision against Ross has followed. The civil suits will now run alongside whatever investigation is still happening, and the discovery process in those suits — where each side has to hand over documents — gives the family a second route to the same material^[11].

Why Each Side Thinks the Other Is Wrong

The family's case rests on three claims. First, that a woman who stopped to watch a federal operation was shot dead without legal justification^[1][2]. Second, that this wasn't one officer's split-second mistake, but the predictable result of how senior officials designed and ran Metro Surge — which is why the conspiracy suit reaches all the way up to Miller and Noem^[13]. Third, that officials labeled Good a domestic terrorist within hours and then fought to keep evidence from state investigators^[7][18]. For the family, a jury trial is the only forum left where their account gets heard in full^[18]. Becca Good spoke publicly for the first time at the filing, describing Good simply: "She was pure love^[7][19]."

The government's strongest argument is about the physics of a moving car. A vehicle can kill an officer in about a second, far faster than he could retreat. If Ross believed Good was driving at him, the law generally allows deadly force in response, and DHS says his injuries back up that belief^[7][8]. From this view, officers enforcing federal law shouldn't be second-guessed in hindsight over split-second decisions made under threat. And senior officials would argue that setting enforcement policy is a lawful exercise of their jobs, not a criminal conspiracy — stretching an 1871 anti-Klan statute to cover policy choices by elected leaders' appointees, in their view, reaches far beyond what the law was written for^[14].

Minnesota's state and county officials occupy a narrower, more procedural position: they argue a state has to be able to investigate a killing on its own soil, regardless of who pulled the trigger, and that a fair charging decision either way requires the evidence they had to sue to obtain^[11][12].

Civil-liberties advocates, including some on the libertarian right, see a pattern rather than an isolated case. A Cato Institute commentary argued that Good wasn't the first person ICE shot in a vehicle, and that the government's justification "followed a familiar script^[20]." Fact-checks have found that federal immigration agents — ICE and Border Patrol combined — shot at least 11 people in nine separate incidents nationwide in 2026^[21]. It's worth being precise here: only two of the resulting deaths, Good's and Keith Porter's, are attributed to ICE specifically. Alex Pretti, a name often mentioned alongside Good's, was killed by a Border Patrol agent, not ICE^[21].

The Coverage Splits Where the Facts Don't

Outlets across the spectrum covered the same filing very differently. The Gateway Pundit called Good an "ICE Protester" — a label her family disputes, since they say she stopped to observe, not protest — and framed the suit itself as "sweeping" overreach^[14]. MS NOW, HuffPost, and NBC News instead named "the Trump administration" or "Trump officials" as the defendants in their headlines, even though one suit names only the United States, and led with Becca Good's grief and Romanucci's line about a government "killing" its own citizens^[16][17][19].

Notably, Fox News's own national coverage leaned on DHS's internal-bleeding account rather than the new filings, while its locally owned station, FOX 9, covered the lawsuits themselves straight^[7][8]. Overseas, IBTimes UK emphasized the historical irony of invoking a law written to fight the Klan against federal immigration agents, and Canada's CBC ran a straightforward, wire-style account^[13][18]. Outside North America and the UK, the story has drawn little attention at all — as of Oct. 2, this is still mostly a US domestic fight, playing out in a federal courtroom over facts that one piece of body-camera footage could have settled months ago, if anyone agreed on what it showed.