Renee Nicole Good, 37, was a poet and mother of three, who was not the target of the ICE raid. Photo / Facebook
Thousands of people in Minneapolis gathered for a candlelight vigil yesterday to mourn Renee Nicole Good and protest against her killing by an ICE officer in the city hours earlier as she appeared to try to drive away in her vehicle during a raid.
Good, 37, was a poet, a mother of three and a movie lover, according to online records. She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk and won an Academy of American Poets Prize for undergraduate students in 2020.
“She had a good life, but a hard life,” her father, Tim Ganger, told the Washington Post. “She was a wonderful person.”
Good had a 15-year-old daughter and two sons, aged 12 and 6, her ex-husband told the Post. She was a US citizen, according to a post on social media by Senator Tina Smith, but federal authorities did not identify her by name or confirm her citizenship. Good did not appear to be the target of the ICE raid.
First, I want to express my deepest sympathy to the family and loved ones of Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, a mother, and a Twin Cities resident who was killed by ICE this morning. I can’t imagine the grief you are enduring.
— Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) January 8, 2026
Like so many Minnesotans, I am heartbroken and…
Good graduated from ODU with a degree in English in December 2020, the university’s president, Brian O. Hemphill, told the Post in a statement. “This is yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation,” he said, adding, “May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace.”
Good was originally from Colorado Springs and once co-hosted a podcast with her husband at the time, comedian Tim Macklin, according to a short biography published about her on social media. Macklin died in 2023, and the two share a 6-year-old son, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, citing an interview with the child’s paternal grandfather.
On an Instagram account appearing to belong to Good, she described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mum and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado” who is “experiencing Minneapolis”.
The biography from the poetry prize similarly characterised her as an avid writer and devoted mother.
“When she is not writing, reading, or talking about writing, she has movie marathons and makes messy art with her daughter and two sons,” it reads.
Good was living with her partner in the Twin Cities area at the time of her death, the Star Tribune reported, citing her mother, Donna Ganger.
The shooting and the narrative the Trump administration has put forth about it have embroiled large swaths of Minneapolis, if not much of the nation. President Donald Trump said that Good was killed by the ICE officer because she “violently, wilfully, and viciously ran over” the agent, who he said appeared to shoot her in self-defence.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a similar claim, calling the incident “preventable” and, without providing evidence, characterising it as “an act of domestic terrorism”.
However, video footage of the killing does not show an officer being run over by a vehicle, but instead shooting towards the driver’s window as the driver reverses and pulls away.
Smith called for “a full and unbiased investigation”.
“It is disgusting when President Trump and Secretary Noem recklessly spin us with a story that this woman was dangerous and a domestic terrorist, apparently excusing this violence with no investigation,” she wrote on social media.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz blamed the Trump administration for the shooting, echoing locals’ frustration over ramped-up federal immigration enforcement efforts targeting Minneapolis.
“We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous operations are a threat to public safety, that someone was going to get hurt,” he said at a news conference. “Just yesterday, I said exactly that.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, said video of the incident showed “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying”.
Niha Masih contributed to this report.
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