By Joseph De Avila
Renee Nicole Good was out to support her neighbors when she was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, according to her wife, Becca Good.
"We had whistles. They had guns," Good said in a statement provided to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday, in her first public remarks since the deadly shooting.
Renee, Good said, left behind three children, including a six-year-old child who has already lost his father. "I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him," Good said.
The Department of Homeland Security said an agent fired in self-defense after Good attempted to run over officers who were deployed as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration, while Minnesota officials accused the Trump administration of spreading falsehoods in an attempt to politicize the encounter.
Becca Good's comments come after Minnesota officials called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to bring in state law enforcement to run a joint investigation into the fatal shooting. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other elected officials on Friday asked the FBI to share evidence with the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
"Our ask is to include the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in this process because we in Minneapolis want a fair investigation," Frey said at a news conference.
Frey's comments underscore the deepening rift between Minnesota and federal officials over the shooting incident earlier this week. Minnesota state Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, a Democrat, said the Trump administration had misled the public about Good and has attempted to blame her for being killed.
"This federal government has given us too many reasons to not trust them to do the right thing," Mohamed said. "Everything short of a full and honest investigation is an insult to her memory."
Protests spread across the country overnight, with anti-ICE rallies held in cities including Atlanta, Houston, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington, D.C.
In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz declared Friday a day of unity to honor the memory of Good and called on residents to hold a moment of silence for her.
Minneapolis schools remain closed Friday and are set to reopen Monday.
Minnesota officials have been grappling with a social-services fraud scandal, which led the Trump administration to dispatch an influx of ICE agents to the state.
The administration is sending investigators to Minnesota to reopen the immigration and refugee applications of the state's Somali residents, to re-vet refugee claims and other materials in applications.
The administration has said it is willing to remove legal status and citizenship from people connected to the fraud scandal. However, stripping immigrants of green cards or refugee status is easier than revoking citizenship, a process that must be decided by a federal judge.
State law-enforcement officials said Thursday the FBI would be running the investigation into the shooting and was refusing to share evidence, after initially agreeing to run a joint probe. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Minnesota law enforcement had no jurisdiction in the probe.
Noem described Good's actions as an "act of domestic terrorism," while Vice President JD Vance defended the agent and said Good was a "victim of left-wing ideology."
Frey said excluding Minnesota law enforcement from the investigation will further erode the public's trust in government. The Trump administration had already determined the outcome of the investigation, Frey said, citing Noem's comments characterizing Good's actions as domestic terrorism and Vance's remarks saying the agent acted in self-defense.
"There is the appearance that there is some conclusion drawn from the very beginning," Frey said.
Frey defended the strong language he used in the immediate aftermath of the shooting calling for ICE to leave the city and describing the agent's actions as a reckless abuse of power.
"I dropped an F bomb. They killed someone," Frey said. "Which one of those is more inflammatory?"
Elsewhere, political leaders have condemned immigration enforcement and suggested such a fatality was inevitable.
Speaking outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) described Good's shooting as murder.
"This has now turned into what our greatest fear is, and has been for a long time around ICE, that this will be used as an anticivilian force that has no accountability," she said. "Murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted."
In a separate incident Thursday, a Border Patrol agent shot two people during a traffic stop in Portland, Ore., in what the Department of Homeland Security described as an act of self-defense.
Write to Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 09, 2026 14:28 ET (19:28 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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