Rebecca (“Becca”) Good, the partner of Renee Good, and Brent Ganger, the court-appointed trustee for Good’s next of kin, filed two lawsuits Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota arising from Good’s fatal encounter with federal immigration agents during Operation Metro Surge. One suit targets ICE agent Jonathan Ross and several senior Trump administration officials in their individual capacities; the other seeks to hold the United States liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

As my RedState colleague Rusty Weiss reported back in January, the family and her partner had retained the services of Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Antonio Romanucci infamously obtained $27 million from the City of Minneapolis in settlement of the wrongful death claims in connection with George Floyd's death. In the 149-page complaint filed on Thursday (against Ross and administration officials), Romanucci presented the plaintiffs' version of the shooting. Becca Good claims that she and Renee Good dropped off Renee Good's 6-year-old child at school, and while Renee Good was driving home, she was caught up in a confrontation with ICE agents.

Federal immigration agents were operating there. They were masked, as was their practice throughout Operation Metro Surge. Renee honked her horn to warn her neighbors. Her partner got out and began to film. Renee stayed behind the wheel. She was not the target of any investigation, and she was breaking no law that any federal officer had authority to enforce.  

The 149-page individual-capacity complaint presents the plaintiffs’ version of a shooting that has generated sharply conflicting accounts. It alleges that Good was attempting to drive away, not toward Ross, and that Ross stepped out of the vehicle’s path before drawing his pistol and firing three rounds—not two.

Renee turned her wheels away from Ross and began to pull slowly forward. Ross stepped sideways. He then leaned forward toward it, drew his gun, and fired a round through the bottom left of her windshield. As Renee’s car continued its slow turn away from him, he fired twice more through her open driver’s window. One of those two rounds entered Renee’s left temple. As her car careened out of control down Portland Avenue and crashed into a parked car, Ross cursed, “fucking bitch.”

The plaintiffs allege that the ICE officers would not render aid to Renee Good and that they refused to allow a neighbor who claimed he was a physician to administer aid. 

As RedState and a few other outlets have reported, Good did not just happen upon the ICE enforcement; she was disrupting their operations and honking her horn to warn others of their presence. DHS released footage from ICE agent Ross' cell phone, which showed Ross firing as Good drove toward him. Per U.S. officials, Ross was struck in the torso by Good's vehicle and was hospitalized for internal bleeding after the altercation.

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Becca Good filmed all this with her own cell phone and is claiming she suffered emotional harm and distress because she had to witness her wife being shot. Becca Good also claims she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The individual-capacity suit also alleges that Renee Good’s death resulted from a coordinated campaign involving senior Trump administration officials and private media figures, including alleged nonparty co-conspirators Chris Rufo, Nick Shirley, Ben Bergquam, and others, aimed at depriving Minnesota’s Somali and Hispanic communities of equal protection.

Along with wrongful-death and excessive-force claims, the plaintiffs seek relief under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. A companion suit against the United States asserts wrongful-death and other tort claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

The attention on Minnesota has since moved past Operation Metro Surge and the unrest that resulted, including the deaths of Renee Good and activist Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed in a separate altercation with Customs and Border Protection agents. The complaints also arrive just ahead of the midterm elections. But with a tight Senate race and investigations into rampant Somali fraud still ongoing, the timing may not work out as intended.