Previous articles in this series:
- ‘We will get ICE out of Minnesota’: Community, unions mobilize for Jan. 23
- The siege of Minneapolis: testimonies from the front lines
“If they are going to shoot us and then call us ‘fucking b*****s,’ then we need to be bigger fucking b*****s.”
-Handlettered protest sign in Minneapolis
First, let’s make something clear. Renee Nicole Good was a lesbian. She had a wife. She was not only a mom; she was a queer mom. That matters.
Don’t let anyone erase her.
Everyone who can stomach it, and many who cannot, has seen at least one of the multiple recordings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorist Jonathan Ross murdering Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Good and her wife, Becca Good – both white and U.S.-born – had just dropped off their child at school. They heard about a nearby ICE raid and drove over to legally observe and document the attack on their immigrant neighbors.
Ross and other ICE agents threatened the couple. The Goods retreated, attempting to drive away.
Ross stepped toward their departing vehicle – a standard practice for Border Patrol agents, documented over a decade ago – to justify shooting at the occupants.
Ross then shot Renee Good four times, killing her. In the aftermath, he shouted at the woman he’d just murdered: “Fucking b****!”
Jonathan Ross is no newbie lacking in training. He is a career repressor who worked for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) prior to joining ICE in 2015.
Before that Ross was part of a National Guard contingent deployed to occupy Iraq – something he later bragged about at a College Republican event in Texas.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the bombs the U.S. dropped on other countries come back to explode at home.
Erasure and demonization
As of this writing, it is just 12 days since Good was murdered.
During that brief time, she and her wife have been subject to a parallel campaign of queer erasure and queer demonization.
Erasure by politicians and the “mainstream” corporate media. Demonization by the far-right web of billionaire-owned social media, MAGA politicians, and corporate platforms like Fox News.
President Donald Trump dismissed Becca as Renee Good’s “friend.” More media coverage has sought out comment from her ex-husband and former in-laws than from her wife. Others refer to Good only as a “widow” (her second husband died in 2023).
Renee’s six-year-old child is called an “orphan” – despite living with a loving and responsible step-mother. The parents of Good’s second husband have already made noises about seeking to take custody.
All this is very familiar to queer people, who often find our identities and our closest family members being erased when tragedy strikes; who find biological relatives and exes ready to seize our children from loving homes at the first opportunity.
Renee and Becca Good were part of the “Pink Migration” – the massive internal refugee crisis inside the U.S., as many states become more dangerous and restrictive for LGBTQIA+ people. The Goods left Missouri for Minnesota, considered a “sanctuary state” for queers as well as migrants.
A recent survey estimated that at least 400,000 trans people alone have fled their home states since Trump’s election in November 2024, seeking safety and access to health care. Others are fleeing abroad.
‘Pronouns in bio’
Meanwhile, the fascist propaganda machine that currently dominates U.S. politics has worked overtime to shine a spotlight on Renee Good’s queerness, to show why she was an acceptable target.
Within hours of her murder, Fox News host Jesse Waters sent out the first volley, describing Good as someone with “pronouns in bio” – a dogwhistle to justify the murder of a white, middle-aged woman to his white supremacist audience.
Trump administration officials labeled Good a “domestic terrorist,” refusing to hand over Jonathan Ross to local authorities. Minnesota was iced out of the “investigation” of Good’s killing. The Justice Department then ordered federal prosecutors to investigate Becca Good rather than Ross – resulting in at least five resignations so far.
On social media platforms like Elon Musk’s “X” and Trump’s “Truth Social,” viral posts spread focusing on disparaging the appearance of Becca Good, and justifying the murder because of the Goods’ being “disrespectful” to ICE agents – the term used by Trump.
CBS News, now controlled by pro-Trump propagandist Bari Weiss, pushed out a story of Ross suffering “internal injuries” from contact with the Goods’ vehicle – a lie about something which never happened.
Meanwhile, Ross’s slur over Renee Good’s body has become the far right’s slogan du jour for any woman who dares resist.
A history of terror
ICE, CPB, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons all have long histories of abusing queer immigrants and U.S.-born LGBTQIA+ people.
Some readers may recall the case of Roxsana Hernandez, a trans woman with AIDS who fled the U.S.-sponsored coup regime in Honduras. She died in ICE custody in 2018, during Trump’s first term, after awful abuse and refusal of medical care.
Last year, trans and other queer immigrants held at an ICE detention center in southern Louisiana exposed how they were subjected to hard labor and sexual assault by prison authorities.
More people have recently learned about the common U.S. prison policy called “v-coding,” which not only places transgender women in men’s prisons, but houses them with “agressive” male inmates to subject them to rape as a form of punishment.
At the same time, these women are denied their right to feminine appearance and often denied gender-affirming medical care like hormone therapy. Overwhelmingly, it is Black and Brown trans women who suffer this torture.
Trans prisoners, including military whistleblower and former political prisoner Chelsea Manning, fought hard for the right to gender-affirming care. The Trump administration is pushing to strip those rights from incarcerated people in the federal prison system.
Queers in the crosshairs
“Anna Brauch wanted to do something to help her neighbors the day after Renee Good was fatally shot,” reported Minnesota Public Radio. “So she stationed herself outside her favorite local bakery in the northeast corner of the city and told the bakery’s immigrant owner she’d be there if ICE came for them.
“Instead, ICE came for her.”
Baruch and her spouse, Mar Navarro, were rushed by ICE agents and violently attacked. Brauch thinks it may have been the mural on her car, which says “Trans Rights are Human Rights,” that attracted their attention.
“I had my phone in one hand and my keys in my other hand, and they all started screaming, like, ‘Get her! She’s got a weapon! Get her!’” Brauch said. “I put my hands up and I said, ‘I don’t have anything!’ But I also had a whistle around my neck, and I blew the whistle so that the people in the bakery would know that ICE was there.” The queer couple was detained.
“Brauch showed agents her injuries and said they promised to call her a medic, who never appeared during her two-hour long detention,” reported MPR. “Eventually, she said the agents called an ambulance, and after failing again to identify her arresting officer, took off her leg shackles and let the paramedics take her to the emergency room.
“Brauch’s spouse was also released later that evening. Neither has been charged with a crime.”
On Jan. 12, another queer couple, Alice Valentine and Sofia Martin – both U.S.-born trans women – responded to a report of ICE agents raiding the Star City Mall, home to many Somali businesses, in the city of St. Cloud, northwest of Minneapolis. Their subsequent ordeal was first reported by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket.
As soon as the women arrived on the scene, they were surrounded by armed federal agents, tear-gassed and physically assaulted. They were thrown into the back of a van with Somali detainees and driven to ICE headquarters – the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.
“The two were questioned separately by ICE officers, and Sofia was subjected to particularly invasive and humiliating questions. They asked her if she had had a sex change and if she had a penis. Alice said back in the cell Sofia told her she answered truthfully to both questions to avoid the officers from groping her for answers.”
Kabas reported: “I asked Alice if she felt like, as visibly queer people, they were particular targets at the protest of agents working for an administration known to be virulently anti-LGBTQIA+, and especially after they shot Renee Good four times — including once in the head — and killed her in a car with her wife Becca. Alice said it didn’t occur to her until she had time to reflect in the van. She said to Sofia ‘You know, I just realized that they probably knew Renee was a lesbian before they shot her.’
“When I was in the cell, I overheard a woman asking to call her girlfriend, and I started crying because I just thought of Renee, and I thought of my girlfriend and this girl. And I was like, ‘Why are so many lesbians being fucked up by ICE right now?’”
Immigrants & queers: targets of white supremacy
The question Alice Valentine asked is important. In fact, it cuts to the heart of capitalist white supremacy in general and the brand of fascism perpetuated by the Trump regime in particular.
Marxists from Frederick Engels to Leslie Feinberg have demonstrated how patriarchy is central to capitalist exploitation. Similarly, white supremacy is central to the U.S. brand of colonialism and imperialism.
White supremacy as practiced in the post-Reconstruction U.S., from lynchings by the Klan to “mainstream” eugenics practices targeting people of color, queers and women, inspired the Nazi German practice of genocide against Jews, Romani, LGBTQIA+ people, and other “undesireables.”
In the same vein as German fascism, the “Great Replacement” conspiracy touted by Trump and his movement provides the ideological foundation for imposing naked fascist rule by capitalist corporations and billionaires today.
According to this conspiracy, the greatest threat to the so-called U.S. “nation” is the increasingly diverse working class and falling birth rates among whites. Immigrants from the Global South – whether heterosexual or queer – are seen as a threat to white (meaning white capitalist) domination and its foundation of dividing and conquering the working class with racism.
Similarly, U.S.-born queer women and trans people, and even straight women who no longer feel forced to “perform” their reproductive duties under patriarchy, are also seen as an existential threat.
Our oppressions are not the same, though often they overlap. But they are connected, because our very existence is fundamentally irreconcilable with the needs of the profit system.
More than ever, the survival of the working class, in its great diversity, calls for us to unite and fight back.
Queer women in Minnesota are showing us how, with their courage to show up in solidarity, even in the face of physical danger and death.
Renee Good won’t be forgotten.
First, I want to extend my gratitude to all the people who have reached out from across the country and around the world to support our family.
This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her.
Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.
Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.
Like people have done across place and time, we moved to make a better life for ourselves. We chose Minnesota to make our home. Our whole extended road trip here, we held hands in the car while our son drew all over the windows to pass the time and the miles.
What we found when we got here was a vibrant and welcoming community, we made friends and spread joy. And while any place we were together was home, there was a strong shared sense here in Minneapolis that we were looking out for each other. Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever.
We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.
On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.
Renee leaves behind three extraordinary children; the youngest is just six years old and 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. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.
We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.
First published by Minnesota Public Radio on Jan. 9, 2026.
