Congress must investigate ICE before more Americans are killed

By The BDN Editorial Board///Jan 14, 2026

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The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.

Americans seem deeply divided on many issues. But, there is one thing that we should be able to agree upon. A masked police force operating far beyond its legal authority should not be going around America harassing, assaulting, threatening, and even killing people.

That is what Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are increasingly doing. The mission of ICE is to enforce immigration laws. ICE agents are not typical police officers. They have very limited authority to restrict the activities of American citizens.

Yet, as anyone who’s watched the numerous videos of the incident has seen, an ICE agent last week fired three shots at Renee Good, who was sitting in her vehicle on a street in Minneapolis. Good was killed by the gunfire.

We can argue, as the Trump administration wants us to, about whether Good should have been monitoring and protesting ICE activity in the Minnesota city. We can argue over whether she should have more quickly obeyed shouted orders, which were sometimes contradictory, rapid fire and certainly threatening. We can argue over whether officer Jonathan Ross felt threatened by Good’s slowly moving vehicle, which he chose to stand in front of.

What we saw and heard was Good talking cheerfully with the ICE members, her car slowly turning away from them, Ross firing into the car and then calling Good an expletive. Ross walked away from the scene, where a doctor was reportedly blocked from trying to treat Good, and drove away.

What should be beyond debate is that no ICE agent, or any law enforcement official, has the right or power to essentially execute someone for not following orders. Or for being “very disrespectful” to law enforcement, as President Donald Trump said this week. ICE officers cannot be allowed to be judge, jury and executioner. And being disrespectful should never result in capital punishment.

If Good was disorderly, as the officers claim, she could have been arrested. Law enforcement has a long history of arresting, not killing, mass shooters, who clearly posed a bigger threat than Renee Good.

A full investigation, by an impartial agency, must be conducted to determine if Ross’s actions were within the bounds of U.S. law. The Trump administration is already impeding a state investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice said it would not investigate the fatal shooting.

Good’s killing, while extreme, is not an aberration for recent ICE activities. The day after the killing of Good, ICE agents shot and injured two people they were trying to apprehend in Oregon. They’ve gone door-to-door threatening people in Minnesota communities, forcing school closures. They’ve brutally pulled people from their homes and cars. And, they reportedly dragged a 17-year-old employee away from a Target store in Minnesota, slamming him to the ground while he said repeatedly that he was an American citizen. ICE agents have detained Indigenous Americans, with no information about their whereabouts.

And, these are only the incidents that have made it into the public eye. No doubt, ICE has harassed, harmed, detained and deported thousands of people in America, most of whom are not criminals.

Rather than apologize for these horrific incidents and pledge better training of ICE agents, the Department of Homeland Security trotted out Nazi slogans.

Seriously.

At a news conference in New York on Thursday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem appeared behind a lectern with the words: “One of ours, all of yours.” This sentiment was shared by Nazis when they retaliated for the killing of one of their members. Every resident of a village in Czechoslovakia was reportedly murdered after a Nazi official was killed there in 1942.

Congress must quickly find out if this is the department’s new standard for handling protesters. If it is, it is completely unacceptable. Especially because Trump has threatened U.S. retaliation against Iran if it cracks down on political protesters there.

If crack downs on political dissent are wrong in Iran, they’re certainly wrong in the United States.

ICE, which saw a huge increase in its budget this year in the Republican-backed Big Beautiful Bill, appears to be an agency out of control. It has essentially become a secret police force far overstepping its bounds with no accountability.

Recent events reiterate the wisdom of states resisting ICE’s overreach. Minnesota and Illinois have gone to court to restrict ICE operations. Last year, the Maine Legislature passed a bill, which Gov. Janet Mills allowed to become law, restricting Maine law enforcement cooperation with ICE.

However, it should not be up to each state to fend off ICE’s overreach and to protect its residents from the agency’s dangerous tactics. Congress must step in to review ICE operations — and restrict them if necessary — before more people are needlessly killed.

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