For months, I have warned my Senate colleagues that the outrages of President Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago were a precursor of what their states would experience when his mass deportation raids by federal immigration agents spread across the nation.
Last week, we saw this in Minneapolis.
The video of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good is horrific and contradicts the self-defense narrative that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has attempted to spin. We need a full investigation into the shootings by federal immigration agents and officers in Minneapolis, Illinois and elsewhere. And the federal government must cooperate with state and local officials on these investigations to ensure there is transparency, accountability and justice.
But we must prepare for more. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is dramatically increasing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement forces with insufficiently trained, masked officers who are heavily subsidized (a maximum $50,000 sign-on bonus) and have virtually no regard for due process.
And incidentally: What of Trump’s promise to use ICE to rid America of “the worst of the worst” — the rapists, murderers and terrorists?
In one instance, from a list of 614 immigrants arrested in the Chicago area that was submitted to a federal court, the administration identified significant criminal histories for just 16 of the detainees. So after record-breaking spending and assaults on our Constitution, that official report could claim fewer than 3% of those immigrants detained had any criminal record.
This reign of terror on America is disgraceful. Noem has avoided testifying under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee for months. What happened in Minneapolis last week was an unacceptable tragedy. She must immediately testify before the Judiciary Committee and be held accountable.
— U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois
We deserve answers
The killing of Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, is a clarion call for transparency and accountability. While local leaders, eyewitnesses and video evidence sharply contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s claim of self-defense, one sobering truth remains: An American is dead at the hands of her own government, and the public deserves answers.
This is not an isolated incident. In September, Silverio Villegas-González, a 38-year-old father, was killed by an ICE officer during a vehicle stop in the Chicago area. According to The Marshall Project, federal officers fired on at least nine people in their vehicles over a four-month period, evidence of a disturbing pattern.
Across the country, communities are experiencing an escalation of militarized immigration enforcement that spreads fear, separates families and violates basic constitutional norms. Armed, masked officials are making arrests without clear identification or due process, often near schools, churches and community spaces. The indiscriminate use of force, including tear gas, has become dangerously normalized by our government.
We are living through a profound rupture in the American experience — one in which democratic norms erode, accountability weakens and immigrants are subjected to unprecedented violence. This moment is no longer about debating border security or the lawful detention of individuals who pose genuine danger, regardless of immigration status. It is about the unnecessary deployment of federally militarized personnel into civilian neighborhoods.
The courts have warned against treating dissent as disloyalty. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put it plainly: “Political opposition is not rebellion.” Americans must remain free to show up for one another and protest peacefully without being branded “terrorists” for exercising First Amendment rights.
We, the people, know from direct experience that immigrants, documented and undocumented, strengthen our communities. They are caregivers, educators, entrepreneurs and essential workers who weave our social fabric and drive the economic vitality of our nation.
We call on this administration to immediately end overly aggressive deportation practices and restore constitutional guardrails in immigration enforcement, including clear identification and accountability for agents, strict limits on the use of force with independent review of all deaths and serious injuries, protection for sensitive community spaces and transparent public reporting with meaningful due process.
We are falling short of the promise of America: All people are created equal.
Enough is enough.
— Raul I. Raymundo, CEO and Co-founder, The Resurrection Project
ICE’s failed mission
In Minneapolis, as an American citizen was attempting to leave the site of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, a masked ICE agent shot her three times and killed this mother of three. She was leaving the area, not attempting to harm the agents.
Should she have stopped? Likely yes, but with the chaos ICE sows, leaving seemed to her to be a better idea. In any case, she was not violent and certainly did not deserve to be fatally shot at close range.
ICE has not improved our safety, has had minimal success at arresting and deporting actual murderers and rapists (which, as I recall, was the stated priority), has sown chaos and distrust, and has failed in its stated mission of improving public safety.
And now, the FBI refuses to cooperate with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on the grounds that the federal government is the supreme agency. That may be, but federal officers are not exempt from our laws and must be held accountable.
My understanding is that cold-blooded murder is illegal for agents and citizens alike, regardless of their employer. I encourage the Minnesota state government to pursue this case and prosecute.
I am a Republican who believes in the Constitution.
— Robert B. Hamilton, Wauconda
Risk to the innocent
As a mother of three and not a professional safety officer, Renee Nicole Good suddenly found herself in a chaotic situation. Untrained people can react impulsively. Armed officers such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have a different perspective, knowing they can be targeted. Alertness can mean the difference between harm and safe conduct. Officers cannot be expected to be mind readers.
Politicians such as Gov. JB Pritzker who advocate for confrontations bear the responsibility for what happened in Minneapolis.
The message here is not a condemnation of either Good or the officer. But rather that politicians cannot proselytize for the confrontations. The risk to the innocent is too great.
— Jim Halas, Norridge
‘Absolute immunity’
Thank you very much for the ongoing and deep reporting about the federal immigration operations in Chicago. A Jan. 9 editorial (“A needless death in Minneapolis”) makes the important point that agents need to de-escalate confrontations wherever possible. That does not seem to be happening.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance claimed that the officer who killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis is “protected by absolute immunity.” This is false. More important, it is very dangerous. The vice president of the United States is telling all federal law enforcement officers that there are no boundaries to their conduct while on duty.
If these officers think anything goes, we will see more violence from them.
— Barbara Hill, Palatine
Trump’s narrative
So according to our president, Renee Nicole Good, who was killed protesting the heavy-handed tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, was a professional agitator. She was a radical leftist zealot who committed domestic terrorism. On the other hand, Donald Trump says that Ashli Babbitt, who was protesting in support of Trump’s false claims about the election of 2020, who battled U.S. Capitol police and climbed through a shattered window to get into the Capitol to prevent Congress from fulfilling its democratic duty, is a hero. Not only a hero, but her family is entitled to compensation from the government for her death.
Do we need any more proof that Trump is either a would-be dictator who wants to stifle any actions he disagrees with and rewrite history or a person who is so divorced from reality that he lives in his own fantasy view of the world?
— Peter Felitti, Chicago
Repetition of lies
Once again, we are being confronted on a daily basis with the challenge of having to determine what is true, what is real and what is an illusion of truth. The misrepresentation of the acts of Jan 6, 2021, and the recent death of Renee Nicole Goode in Minneapolis highlight the illusion of truth and its perils to society.
An illusion of truth is built by repeating a lie often enough that the lie takes on the patina of truth. Many politicians seem to grasp this principle quickly. It was used with extreme effectiveness by Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and continued until his death by suicide in 1945. Anyone who has read about Hitler and the effect of his lies has an idea of how the politics of lying can lead to horrific outcomes.
Today, we are again confronted with lies that are repeated frequently by members of President Donald Trump’s administration and Trump himself.
Was the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, riot and attack on U.S. democracy and the electoral process a peaceful walk in the park? Or did it actually lead to the deaths of U.S. Capitol Police who were defending the Constitution and duly elected members of Congress? It is a grave mistake to confuse the illusion of truth with court-recorded testimony from experts and firsthand witnesses.
Have Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents engaged in activities that have resulted in the injury, attack, arrest, harassment and fatalities of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in Illinois, Minnesota and Oregon? The answer lies in the facts of firsthand witnesses, video evidence, gathered documentation from experts and legal court proceedings.
Inflammatory statements made by Trump administration officials regarding recent acts involving ICE and Border Patrol agents before evidence has been gathered and fully evaluated have resulted in misinformation and the defamation of U.S. citizens who have suffered at the hands of federal agents.
Belief in a frequently repeated lie is risky business. The illusion of truth may sound good. It might make a great sound bite. It might be easy to share online. But it presents a risk and a danger to our Constitution and our democratic republic.
Truth matters. Now more than ever.
— Patricia Kluzik Stauch, Elgin
Madness must end
Last week’s senseless shooting death in Minneapolis is the latest, but sadly, probably not the last, that will be perpetrated by the tin soldier brigades deployed across the county by Donald Trump.
At least 30 incidents in which federal agents shot someone or held them at gunpoint since Trump launched his immigration crackdown have been documented by The Trace, an organization that tracks gun violence in America. Four people have been killed, and another seven have been injured.
The dead include last week’s victim, Renee Nicole Good, a law-abiding U.S. citizen. She was shot and killed soon after dropping off her 6-year-old son at school. These circumstances mirror the death of Silverio Villegas González, fatally shot by federal immigration agents during a traffic stop in Franklin Park on Sept. 12 after he dropped his daughter off at school.
Within hours of Good’s death, Trump, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and others concluded the shooting was justified because federal agents were in fear of their lives. The victim was labeled a domestic terrorist, a radical and violent left-wing ideologue. Never mind her social media accounts, where she described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.”
The day after the shooting, Minnesota state law enforcement learned they would not have access to evidence from the shooting. The FBI alone will conduct an investigation.
In 1970, following the murders of four students on the Kent State University campus, Neil Young asked: “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground? How can you run when you know?” In 2026, how can we run, look away and ignore the reality that the Trump administration has brought violence, lawlessness and killings to American communities?
This madness must end.
— Steven M. Ostrowski, Lombard
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