An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Goode. Residents are ready to fight back.
People protest against ICE during a vigil for Renee Nicole Goode, who was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier that day in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026.
(Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
MInneapolis— At the base of a barren tree in south Minneapolis, candles flickered in the night. A vigil for Renee Nicole Goode, the 37-year-old mother and poet shot in the face by a federal agent yesterday morning, has ended, but congregants remain. Some were holding flowers. Some warmed themselves by makeshift fires. Some were crying. Nearby, two words were scrawled in red in the snow: ICE KILLS.
“We haven’t seen such a large gathering in our city since the murder of George Floyd,” Suleiman Adan, deputy executive director of CAIR Minnesota, said of the vigil that drew thousands of people. Indeed, Goode's death follows an unfortunately familiar pattern: law enforcement uses deadly force, video circulates, claims of self-defense, protesters gather, demands are made. According to Minneapolis City Council member Robin Wansley, the calls to action are simple: ICE gets out of Minneapolis, justice for Renee.
“Her murder cannot be allowed to happen without consequences,” Wansley told me. “This should not be a national standard.” The agent must be arrested and local control of the investigation ensured. According to the Ministry of Natural ResourcesGovernment investigators have already been removed from the case, and the only investigative unit is the FBI.
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Any investigation by the federal government will likely be a sham, says Alex Vitale, author of the book The end of the policeadded. “People should try to create their own sense of justice,” he said, referring to Petition “We Blame Genocide” 1950s, which aimed to hold the police and mob accountable for the murders of unarmed black men and women. The US government has long been unwilling to tolerate violence.
At the same time a candlelight vigil was held for Goode, Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), held a press conference in which she called Goode a “domestic terrorist,” a label the administration has increasingly applied to anyone who disagrees with it. This morning, protesters gathered outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, which houses DHS, just as they did in Noem's visit at the end of October. On Monday alone, ICE agents arrested 150 people in Minneapolis.
“The real and important question is how far Minnesota officials are willing to go to challenge out-of-control federal law enforcement,” Stuart Schroeder, author of the book Icons without borderssaid. “Prosecutors must convene a grand jury to indict the shooter, and state and local law enforcement or the National Guard must be mobilized to stop ICE. If I were Walz, I would cross the Rubicon.”
Colleen Fitzgerald, a protester dressed as a clown, said the investigation was the bare minimum. “I believe burning at the stake is not an option,” she said.
While Walz has the National Guard on standby, it is unclear whether its purpose will be to quell protests or resist ICE. During the morning protest, a number of masked ICE agents pushed community members back and threw smoke bombs into the crowd. “Nazis!” people shouted. “ICE is out now!”
“The people of Minneapolis have proven time and time again that we care deeply about each other,” Wansley told me. “When we see serious injustice happening, we organize to ensure justice or accountability is served.”
“Right now people are afraid to just live their lives,” she added. Some parents, Adnan noted, sew their children's passports into their jackets. Although he is a naturalized citizen, he began carrying it with him everywhere he went.
“As people of faith, we believe that God has chosen the people of Minneapolis to continue the work we began in 2020,” he said. “The work wasn't done then, and it's not done now.”
Trump's crackdown is not based on research or logic, says criminologist Charis Kubrin. “It is driven by emotion, stereotypes and moral panic” and lies at the intersection of negative stereotypes based on race and immigration status.
Immigrants are indeed being scapegoated for problems caused by rampant corporate greed, Vitale told me. “When we see the problem being passed on to people with guns, we have to look for the political mistakes that are being hidden,” he said. “Strong Man Theater” is designed to divert attention from current problems. “A lot of it is about overcoming the sense of emasculation that much of the population feels in the face of unbridled corporate power,” he explained. “It breeds the kind of toxic masculinity that seeks refuge in the trappings of military power, whether it's invading Venezuela or chasing Latino housekeepers down the street in Minneapolis.”
Protests are important, but “we also need organization,” he said. “It took 10 years between the Montgomery bus boycott and the passage of real civil rights legislation. We need to think longer term. But the underlying arguments that the police are doing too much, that reform is a distraction, those ideas have really caught on and have a lot of public support.”
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Even Mayor Jacob Frey, who was booed in 2020 for refusing to support the protection movement, said ICE should “get the hell out” of Minneapolis.
In the hours after Goode's death, the scene was surrounded by yellow crime tape and metal barricades. Protesters gathered around the perimeter and shouted at local police officers who were randomly gathering near their cars.
– Why the hell are you smiling? a protester shouted at a police officer in riot gear. “Someone was killed” Despite a recently strengthened separation order that bars local police from enforcing federal immigration laws, the prevailing feeling has been that police are protecting ICE, not the people.
“They killed a white woman!” a protester yelled at a woman wearing a bulletproof vest that said “FBI.” “It could have been you!”
“If only there was poem about this,” someone added.
As of this morning, the street remained barricaded, with fires burning at each end. A crowd gathered around the memorial as a woman handed out samosas. Meanwhile, near Henry Whipple, a man fell to his knees in the snow after agents threw a smoke bomb in his direction. “I can't breathe!” – he said. A medic poured water into his eyes while a crowd of journalists photographed the moment. The scene was reminiscent of 2020, as was the sentiment around it. In Adan's words: “The world is watching.”
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