The fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week has prompted new scrutiny of the tactics and training for the thousands of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers deployed across the country as part of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation effort.
Administration officials have defended the Ice officer who shot Good as she pulled away in her vehicle, saying multiple videos of the incident show that he acted in self-defence.
Several former law enforcement officials who reviewed the footage and spoke to the Washington Post faulted the officer’s actions.
They said the officer - identified through court records as Jonathan Ross, an employee of the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division - placed himself at needless risk, escalated the situation and went against best law enforcement practices during the incident.
Law enforcement officers should not position themselves in front of vehicles, and they need to try to de-escalate confrontations and must generally avoid shooting into moving vehicles, these officials said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Ice officer “followed his training” and accused Good of trying to run him over.
Good’s SUV did move towards Ross as he stood in front of it, according to a Post analysis of video footage. But he moved out of the way and fired at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, the analysis found.
Available videos of the incident reviewed by the Post do not show clearly if Good’s vehicle made contact with Ross.
“It was really an unnecessary shooting,” said Dennis Kenney, a former Florida police officer and a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“If you’ve got time to shoot, you’ve got time to get out of the way, which we saw in this case. The guy was clearly able to avoid being impacted by the car.”
James Pastor, a former Chicago police officer and an expert in how and when police use their weapons, said lethal force might not be warranted if the threat is dissipated by a car driving away.
But in many situations, he said, officers have split-seconds to make decisions and have been trained that cars are deadly weapons no different from a firearm.
“When you’re the one experiencing it, your vantage point is different and your emotion - and even at some level your decision-making process - is affected,” said Pastor, a former police union lawyer.
Law enforcement officers generally have broad legal protections to use deadly force if they perceive a legitimate threat.
At the same time, experts who spoke to the Post said many police agencies advise against shooting at moving vehicles because of the risks it creates, particularly if a driver is struck and loses control of their vehicle.
“You shoot at a car, you shoot at a driver, and the car goes out of control,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which works with law enforcement agencies on safety and other issues. “You don’t know where it’s going to go … What you have is almost like an unguided missile.”
Since the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown began last year, federal authorities have sent thousands of federal immigration officers into cities and states across the country.
In some areas, including Minneapolis, local officials and residents have vocally opposed the Administration’s push, and citizen groups have formed to monitor Ice activity and alert immigrants when federal officers are nearby.
Immigration officers and Border Patrol agents have in some cases used aggressive tactics to take people into custody or repel protesters, including smashing car windows or reaching into vehicles.
The Department of Homeland Security has said officers are facing a surge in threats and assaults, including with vehicles used as weapons, and blamed “sanctuary politicians and the media”.
Officials have vowed to prosecute “rioters” and warned that demonstrations will not stop their immigration enforcement efforts.
Federal immigration officers have been involved in more than a dozen shootings during Trump’s second term, according to media reports and court records.
Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy instructs officers to try to de-escalate tensions and allows them to use deadly force if they believe someone faces an imminent threat of being killed or seriously injured.
Officers are prohibited from shooting at drivers of moving vehicles unless the use of deadly force is otherwise justified, according to the policy, which was last updated in 2023.
Before firing, officers must “take into consideration the hazards that may be posed to law enforcement and innocent bystanders by an out-of-control conveyance”, the policy states.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the 2023 policy remains in place.
“Ice law enforcement officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritise the safety of the public and our officers,” she said.
“Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”
However, two former federal officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said the actions of Ice officers when confronting Good appeared to intensify the situation.
One specifically cited the action of an unnamed officer who is shown on video pulling on the door handle of Good’s vehicle.
That approach is “never going to end well. You’re escalating,” the former official said. “They should have said, ‘Ma’am, please step out of the car.’ When somebody comes in hot and aggressive, it triggers in people a fight-or-flight [response].”
The other former federal official said the shooting might end up being justified because Good did appear to drive her vehicle towards the officer. But, that official and others said, Ross erred by placing himself in front of Good’s SUV in the first place.
Video shows Ross walked around the back of the vehicle before ending up near the front windshield.
“You never should put yourself in that position in front of or behind the car, you shouldn’t grab a door handle, you shouldn’t attempt to reach inside a vehicle,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Customs and Border Protection commissioner and former Seattle police chief. “City police officers know this.”
Ross is a longtime Ice officer who was dragged by a vehicle and injured during a different incident involving a motorist in June.
In a court case related to the dragging incident, he testified that he has made hundreds of traffic stops in his career.
Attempts to contact Ross and his family since the shooting have been largely unsuccessful. His father declined to comment when reached by the Post.
Homeland Security is also bringing in a wave of new agents and officers - more than 12,000 in recent months, which officials have said is “faster than any previous recruitment effort in the agency’s history”.
The hiring spree has raised concerns that the agency is watering down training to increase officer deployments.
In 2018, Ice officer basic training spanned 20 weeks, including Spanish language classes.
DHS said in a statement at the weekend that training for recruits at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre in Georgia is now eight weeks and has been streamlined “to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements”.
Among the trims are Spanish-language classes; the statement said officers are using “robust translation and interpretation services” to communicate in multiple languages instead.
The agency noted that many recruits had prior experience in law enforcement or the military.
“No subject matter has been cut,” McLaughlin said. “Candidates still learn the same elements and meet the same high standards ICE has always required.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal (Democrat-Connecticut) wrote in a letter to Noem that he was seeking training records for the officer who shot Good as well as documents showing any changes to use-of-force training.
Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote that he wanted to know “how thoroughly, if at all, agents are being trained on DHS policies governing the use of force, what those policies are” and whether “speed is being prioritised over safety and substance in the training and hiring of these new officers”.
Asked about Blumenthal’s letter, McLaughlin pointed to footage that circulated showing the moments before the shooting, which she said showed that the officer “acted in self-defence”. The cellphone footage was recorded by Ross and showed Good speaking to him before the shooting.
Sean Smoot, a law enforcement consultant and former police officer in Illinois, said he was troubled by Ross holding a cellphone during the incident.
“It’s not safe,” Smoot said. “You are not focused and you’ve occupied one of only two hands that you have to either defend yourself or to take action if you need to.”
McLaughlin said Ice policy requires officers to report every use-of-force incident, including shootings. After any federal, state or local investigation, she said, Ice conducts its own internal review into the incident.
Local police departments have long grappled with policies and training regarding moving vehicles.
Most major departments have restrictions on shooting into moving cars, though some - including New York City - go further and largely ban it, Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum said.
These shifts in policy can sometimes follow controversial shootings by police.
In Miami Beach, more than a decade ago, the police department banned shooting into moving vehicles after officers fired more than 100 times at a car that had struck several others and almost hit officers on bicycles.
The car’s driver died and four bystanders were injured. Prosecutors later said the shooting was legally justified.
“Rounds, when they go downrange and they deflect off a car, they can go in all kinds of crazy directions,” said Daniel Oates, the former Miami Beach police chief who instituted the policy and modelled it on New York’s. He later amended it to add an exemption for vehicles being used in attacks.
Oates said the Homeland Security policy on shooting at vehicles contains broad exceptions, including allowances for officers to fire if they think anyone faces a serious threat of death or harm.
Still, he said, Ross appeared to go against best police practices by putting himself in front of Good’s vehicle in Minneapolis.
“It’s your responsibility not to place yourself in front of a car,” Oates said. “You can almost always find that person later if they’ve committed some horrible offence.”
US law enforcement officers are rarely charged when they kill people while on duty.
And when they are charged, convictions are also infrequent. Under the US Supreme Court’s Graham vs Connor decision in 1989, officers’ actions must be judged against what a reasonable officer would do in the same situation.
It was not clear from the footage circulating online after the shooting whether the Ice officer followed Homeland Security policy during the shooting, said Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice and a former police supervisor in Memphis.
Any investigation would be likely to focus on whether the officer believed there was an imminent threat and ask if there were safer alternatives to gunfire or if the officer’s positioning or tactics “unreasonably created the situation,” he said.
“Sometimes these incidents can end up being ‘lawful but awful’ if the legal standard is met but the tactics look avoidable in hindsight,” Johnson said.
- Robert Klemko contributed to this report.
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