Who Was Renee Nicole Macklin Good?

Renee Nicole Macklin Good was an American citizen and mother who was shot and killed on January 7, 2026, in an altercation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Read more: The 2025-26 immigration action in Minnesota.

Good, 37, was the mother of three children, ages 15, 12, and 6, according to her ex-husband, the father of the older children. The 6-year-old, whom Good had dropped off at school before the shooting, was from her second marriage, to Timmy Macklin, Jr., who died in 2023. On social media, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.”

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Bystander Video: A History: Renee Good and Alex Pretti

Good had moved with her wife, Becca Good, to Minneapolis in 2025. The couple lived in a house just blocks from where she was killed. In a statement to Minnesota Public Radio, Becca Good acknowledged that she and Renee Good were on the street where the shooting took place to object to the presence of ICE in their community:

On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.

Good studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and was awarded the school’s poetry prize in 2020. Her ex-husband said that in recent years she had been a stay-at-home mom, but she had previously worked as a dental assistant. In an interview with the Associated Press, he also recalled her taking Christian youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger.

When notified of her daughter’s death, Donna Ganger told the Minnesota Star Tribune that Good was “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

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Death

Good’s death occurred at a time when U.S. Pres. Donald Trump ordered some 2,000 ICE officers to be sent to Minneapolis as part of what an administration official called the “largest immigration operation ever.”

In the wake of Good’s death, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump described a scene in which Good tried to hit ICE officers with the SUV she was driving. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, however, pushed back on their assertions, with Frey calling it a “garbage narrative” and demanding that ICE leave the city.

Video of the incident was widely circulated. In it, Good’s car is positioned sideways on the street. She allows a driver to go past her before her vehicle is approached by three ICE agents. Good first reverses, then moves forward as an ICE agent orders her to get out of her car while grabbing the door handle. Good then turns her SUV to the right and begins to move the car forward, at which point another ICE officer standing on the front left side of the vehicle opens fire three times. The officer who fired the fatal shots has been identified as Jonathan Ross.

Numerous eyewitnesses said they believed Good had been attempting to leave the scene rather than hit anyone with the vehicle.

“At the time, I did not even think there was a risk of her hitting anybody,” said eyewitness Aidan Perzana in a PBS News Hour interview.

“I just can’t be more clear that she posed absolutely no threat at all,” another eyewitness told Minnesota Public Radio.

Aftermath

In the days after Good’s death, thousands of people participated in protests against ICE in Minnesota and around the country. The surge in Minnesota protests prompted Noem to order “hundreds more” agents to the area. The protests were largely peaceful, but some arrests were reported. The states of Minnesota and Illinois also filed lawsuits against the federal government, saying that ICE deployments to Chicago and Minneapolis were unconstitutional and violated states’ rights as outlined in the 10th Amendment. The Trump administration called the lawsuits “baseless” and vowed to fight them in court.

Less than two weeks after Good’s death, Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other Democratic leaders were subpoenaed as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether the officials conspired to impede ICE’s work in the state.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche accused Walz and Frey of “encouraging violence against law enforcement” and referred to their actions as “terrorism.” Both men called for ICE to leave the state in the aftermath of Good’s death but also encouraged residents to protest peacefully. “Stay safe and stay peaceful today,” Walz posted on social media 10 days after Good’s death even as he mobilized the National Guard to be ready to support local and state police.

In February 2026, The New York Times reported that as members of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office prepared a standard investigation into whether the shooting was a violation of federal civil rights laws, the Justice Department shut down the investigation, suggesting instead that prosecutors investigate Renee Good’s widow. Ultimately, the top federal prosecutor and five other attorneys resigned in protest.

In October 2026, Good’s family filed a pair of civil lawsuits against the federal government alleging that wrongful use of forced led to Good’s death. “Renee’s death was not an accident. It was the predictable result of a coordinate campaign by senior officials in this administration to target Minnesotans of Somali or Hispanic origin and silence anyone who dared raise their voice in protest.” The suit names the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and Ross, the officer who shot Good.

Second deadly shooting

On January 24, 2026, federal agents shot and killed a protestor during a confrontation in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse and U.S. citizen, was shot multiple times during a protest against the Trump administration’s continued immigration enforcement actions.

Again, government officials labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist;” again, bystander video disputed those characterizations.

Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey again called for ICE to leave Minnesota while calling on residents to be peaceful. Thousands of Minnesotans gathered at the scene of the second fatal shooting of a resident by federal agents in three weeks.