As a brown woman in the US, I’m afraid to protest

People protest in the Mission District in San Francisco on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis. (AP)

Renee Nicole Good should be alive today. Instead, this 37‑year‑old wife, mother, sister, and daughter was shot and killed by an ICE agent on a Minneapolis street — and the federal government’s response has been to double down, deflect, and deny. This was a rupture — a moment when the mask of federal authority slipped, revealing something far more dangerous beneath. And it happened just miles from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Good “weaponised her vehicle” and tried to run over agents. But eyewitnesses and local officials tell a different story. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, after reviewing the bodycam footage, called the federal account “garbage”. Governor Tim Walz said the killing was “totally avoidable”. Yet instead of cooperating with state investigators, the federal government has locked down the case. The FBI seized control of the investigation, refused to share evidence with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and has kept the footage under wraps. And when Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem labelled Good a domestic terrorist mere hours after her death, it became clear the narrative was being engineered, not investigated.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis and its suburbs are simmering with dread and anger, not only over Good’s killing but over the ICE operations continuing with impunity. At a Minneapolis high school, ICE agents threw students onto the snow‑covered ground while attempting arrests, then pepper‑sprayed protestors and bystanders who tried to help. Grocery stores, schools, construction sites — nothing is off limits.

I wish I could say I’ll be out there every day, marching and chanting, holding a sign with Renee’s name on it. But the truth is more complicated. As a brown woman in America, I don’t get to move through these moments with the same safety cushion others take for granted. I feel the eyes on me before I even open my mouth. I feel the calculation — the quiet, constant awareness that if something goes wrong at a protest, if an agent decides I look “suspicious”, if I’m pushed or pepper‑sprayed or thrown to the ground, the burden of proof won’t fall on them. It will fall on me. On my body. On my identity.

That fear isn’t hypothetical. It’s lived. It’s in the stories of people detained for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s in the knowledge that federal power, once unleashed, doesn’t distinguish between “protester”, “bystander,” and “brown woman walking home”. And that fear — that dread that coils in your stomach and makes you hesitate before stepping into the street — is part of the violence, too. When the state can make you afraid to show up, speak, grieve in public, it has already taken something fundamental from you.

The refusal to share evidence, the unilateral control of the narrative, and the invocation of “self‑defence” without transparency echo the tactics of regimes that weaponised secrecy to suppress dissent. It’s impossible not to recall the Gestapo of Nazi Germany or the Stasi of East Germany. Good’s killing is a warning. And it’s not an isolated one. Just one day after her death, Border Patrol agents shot and injured two people in Portland, Oregon. In September 2025, Silverio Villegas González was killed by federal agents outside Chicago under similarly murky circumstances. In both cases, the federal government shielded its agents from scrutiny.

ICE has operated with near‑total impunity in cities across the country. Communities have been terrorised, families torn apart, and now, a woman is dead. We must demand an independent investigation. We must demand that federal agents operating in our cities be subject to local oversight. And we must demand that the lives of people like Good be treated with the same value and dignity as anyone else’s.

Renee Good’s life mattered. Her death must not be forgotten. And her name must not become another footnote in a growing list of ICE casualties.