The family of Renee Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis woman shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in January, filed two civil lawsuits this week against the agent who fired on her, four current and former Trump administration officials, and the federal government, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Good was killed on Jan. 7 near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue in south Minneapolis after she and her wife, Becca Good, stopped to observe federal agents conducting an immigration sweep. The operation, known internally as Operation Metro Surge, deployed thousands of ICE personnel across the Twin Cities that winter; officials said at the time they were targeting "the worst of the worst," though data later showed fewer than a quarter of those arrested had any criminal conviction.
The suits, announced at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, name the ICE agent who fired the fatal shots, Jonathan Ross, along with Gregory Bovino, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. They also name the United States government directly.
A rarely used civil-rights law
Rather than relying solely on an ordinary wrongful-death claim, Good's attorneys, the Chicago firm Romanucci & Blandin, which also represented George Floyd's family, are invoking the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era statute originally written to let victims of racial terror sue officials who conspired to deprive them of their rights. The complaints argue that senior officials created the conditions for Good's death by encouraging aggressive tactics with little fear of consequences.
The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that Ross fired in self-defense after Good "weaponized" her vehicle, a characterization her family's lawyers and multiple witnesses dispute. The Department of Justice said in January it saw no basis for a civil-rights investigation into the shooting.
"She was the love of my life. She was funny and she was smart and she was gorgeous."
Becca Good, Renee Good's wife
The suits seek compensation both for the suffering Good endured in her final moments and for the permanent loss to her family. Civil claims against individual federal officers are historically difficult to win, and the administration is expected to seek dismissal on immunity grounds; a ruling on any such motion is unlikely before next year.
