President Trump said Tuesday that Renee Good’s behavior in the moments leading up to a fatal shooting by a federal immigration officer “were pretty tough.”
“I would bet you that she, under normal circumstances, was a very solid, wonderful person,” Trump told CBS News’s Tony Dokoupil. “But her actions were pretty tough.”
Good, 37, was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis last Wednesday.
Video recorded by Ross before the shooting shows Good sitting in her red Honda, parked perpendicularly across the street, as she speaks to the officer while he walks along the driver’s side to film her license plate. In the clip, she tells him, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”
Moments later, several masked officers move toward the vehicle and repeatedly order Good to get out. One officer is seen grabbing the driver’s side door handle. Good then backs the car.
As Good turns the wheel and drives forward — with her partner urging her on — Ross, who had moved in front of the vehicle, fires multiple shots. The car then accelerates. Another video shows the vehicle striking the officer and crashing into a car parked farther down the street.
“When you look at that tape, it can be viewed two [different] ways, I guess,” Trump said Tuesday. He added that some versions of the video “are very, very bad.”
Administration officials have defended Ross, arguing he acted in self-defense. They also accused Good of obstructing a federal law enforcement operation by blocking the road and described her actions as “domestic terrorism,” claiming she “weaponized” her vehicle. ICE has separately said the officer was injured in June after being dragged by a car during an apprehension.
Timmy Macklin — the father of Good’s husband, who died in 2023 — said Tuesday that her death stemmed from “bad choices.”
“I’m not blaming anybody,” Macklin told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It’s a hard situation all the way around, it’s hard for everybody involved.”
The shooting has prompted protests against Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown. Democratic lawmakers have also called for limiting ICE, which the administration has deployed to cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Trump defended his immigration approach Tuesday, saying ICE “is working very hard” and that “their job is being made very, very difficult.”
