The FBI is reportedly probing whether Renee Good had ties to activist groups as part of its investigation into an ICE agent fatally shooting her last week in Minneapolis, potentially giving fuel to critics who have warned the administration is trying to chill left-wing activism critical of its policies.
The day of the January 7 shooting, Good and her wife, Becca, had stopped to protest agents in the city during the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown there.
“[W]e stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca Good told Minnesota Public Radio. “We had whistles. They had guns.”
Investigators are reportedly probing whether Good was involved with the activist groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration agenda and might have acted as “instigators” of the January 7 shooting, The New York Times reports, citing people familiar with the probe. At the same time, federal investigators have stopped state investigators from fully scrutinizing the shooting by blocking their access to evidence, according to Minnesota officials.
The Independent has contacted the FBI for comment.
Administration officials have, however, repeatedly insinuated Good was part of some kind of larger conspiracy.
President Trump has referred to Good as a “professional agitator,” though he did not provide any evidence of this. Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, has suggested after the shooting that the Democratic Party has acted to “support and orchestrate violent resistance against federal law enforcement,” though he also did not provide information to support that claim. Shortly after the shooting, as investigators were still combing the scene, the administration described Good as a domestic terrorist.
Anonymous federal sources told Fox News that Good, who had recently moved to Minneapolis, was part of a neighborhood watch-style “ICE Watch” group that aims to monitor and interfere with immigration operations.
Federal officials accuse Good of blocking agents and attempting to ram them with her call. Local officials dispute this, pointing to a widely circulated video of the incident that appears to show Good was not heading straight for agents as ICE officer Jonathan Ross opened fire.
The reported push to investigate local groups comes after the administration last year declared antifa, a varied, leaderless, left-wing anti-fascist movement, to be a major “domestic terrorist group.”
Later in the year, the DOJ launched a prosecution against an alleged group of antifa members accused of attacking an immigration detention center in Texas.
In a leaked memo, the Justice Department reportedly listed what criteria it would use to identify domestic terror organizations, and many of them corresponded with left-wing causes like anti-capitalism, opposition to immigration enforcement, and criticism of the United States.
