The Trump Administration's Justifications for Renee Good's Murder Are Textbook Police State Tactics

The Trump administration has already launched a campaign to designate anyone with pro-immigration views as a “domestic terrorist“ and specifically to target observers and protesters of ICE immigration raids. In Minneapolis, that campaign produced its result, emboldening an ICE agent to shoot and kill a woman who posed no direct threat to the agents.

Like most mainstream news reports, the Washington Post account uses mealy-mouthed terminology about how video of the shooting “raises questions,” but if you just read the facts it reports, they provide damning answers to those questions:

In the aftermath, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said the woman had committed an act of “domestic terrorism,” first disobeying officers’ commands and then weaponizing her SUV by attempting to “run a law enforcement officer over.” President Donald Trump said the woman “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”

A frame-by-frame analysis of video footage, however, raises questions about those accounts. The SUV did move toward the ICE agent as he stood in front of it. But the agent was able to move out of the way and fire at least two of three shots from the side of the vehicle as it veered past him, according to the analysis. …

The agent who was first seen behind Good’s SUV reemerges in front of the vehicle, still appearing to hold up a phone. The SUV quickly pulls forward, and then veers to the right, in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.

As the vehicle moves forward, video shows, the agent moves out of the way and at nearly the same time fires his first shot. The footage shows that his other two shots were fired from the side of the vehicle.

This is corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses.

Even more terrifying are justifications blaming the victim from multiple Republican members of Congress, including this from Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt: “The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.”

This is the motto of a police state, not a free society.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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