A week after a federal immigration agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, her family has hired a Chicago-based law firm to investigate the shooting.
Romanucci & Blandin in a news release Wednesday said it’s been retained by Good’s family — including her partner, parents and four siblings — to secure accountability for her death and “honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America.”
The prominent civil rights firm, which will be co-representing Good’s family alongside a Minneapolis attorney, will be launching a “civil investigation” into the Jan. 7 shooting, it stated, noting “transparency is essential in this case of national importance.”
No stranger to national cases, the firm co-represented the family of George Floyd after he was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. The firm ultimately helped secure a $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family.
Last week, Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot in the head by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on a residential road in Minneapolis. The Department of Homeland Security was quick to say the agent who killed Good was acting in self-defense, recalling claims from the agency in the aftermath of the two federal shootings in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz. The shooting has prompted protests across the country, including Chicago and its suburbs, and calls for justice as tensions flare in Minneapolis.
After 64 days spent sweeping the Chicago area, Minnesota has become the latest target of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, with DHS pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers to the state in what the agency has touted will be its “largest operation ever.”
Romanucci & Blandin’s investigation comes in the wake of the state of Minnesota, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, filing suit against the Trump administration on Monday to halt or limit the surge. The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago are likewise suing the Trump administration in federal court over its “militarized” immigration enforcement tactics.
With their investigation, the attorneys representing Good’s family say they intend to share information learned on a rolling basis, maintaining “the community is not receiving transparency about this case elsewhere.”
Before Good was shot, she and her wife, Becca Good, were on their way to drop off their 6-year-old child at school when they saw federal enforcement activity in their Minneapolis neighborhood, Romanucci & Blandin said in their release Wednesday. Bystander videos and a video taken by the officer who fired at Good posted online show what happened later from several different angles, from officers approaching Good’s car to the moment she was shot. DHS has said the officer had been “fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement officers and the safety of the public” when he opened fire. Local and state officials immediately cast doubt on the federal narrative.
Romanucci & Blandin, pointing to video footage of the shooting, said Good appeared to reverse her car and turn away from the agent who shot at her.
A top Justice Department official on Tuesday said the department currently sees no basis to open a criminal civil rights investigation into the killing of Good. An FBI probe is ongoing but without the involvement of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, after the federal government blocked state investigators’ access to evidence and other information it would need to review the shooting.
Meanwhile, this week six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over a push by the Justice Department to investigate Good’s widow and the department’s reluctance to investigate the agent who fired the shots, The New York Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the decision.
“People in Minneapolis and across this country truly, truly care about what happened to Renee Good,” Romanucci & Blandin founding partner Antonio Romanucci said in a statement, adding that the firm hopes its investigation yields better policing. “We will be that voice.”
The firm has been actively involved in immigration cases in the wake of Midway Blitz. After a 15-year-old U.S. citizen was detained by Border Patrol agents during a clash between agents and residents in a residential neighborhood in the city’s East Side neighborhood last October, the firm intervened to secure the teen’s release.
And the firm is currently representing more than a dozen U.S. citizens detained in Chicago through the course of Midway Blitz.
The civil litigation team representing Good’s family will follow a “somewhat different process” from filing a lawsuit, for instance, against state or local law enforcement officers, which the attorneys say is already a challenging feat but stands to be even more complex against the federal government.
Still, this process “will not deter us in any way from fervently pursuing justice,” Romanucci said.
Good’s family, in a statement provided by their attorneys, said Good was “the beautiful light of our family and brought joy to anyone we met.”
“She was our protector,” they remembered, “our shoulder to cry on, and our scintillating source of joy.”
They said they miss Good more than words can express.
The Associated Press contributed.
