Dear Editor,

Does Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, deserve sympathy?  Maybe.

NBC News writes that he was deployed to Iraq as a member of the Indiana National Guard from November 2004 to November 2005, where he earned commendations for his service. After he returned home, Ross joined the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, in 2007, and worked for the agency until 2015 as a field intelligence agent. He then joined ICE as a deportation officer based in Minnesota whose job was to identify and arrest “higher value targets.” 

Seven months prior to this shooting, while attempting to detain a Guatemalan immigrant, he broke the window of that car and was dragged for 50 yards and received over 30 stitches.  He was badly bruised.

Jonathan Alter, in a blog called Old Goats, titled “How the Murder of Renee Good changes the Stakes for Good” (double entendre), writes, “Of course, the ICE story will likely get worse before it gets better. With the help of bonuses of up to $50,000 for each new recruit, ICE has more than doubled in size to 22,000 officers and agents—a large, hastily-trained police force that will kill again.

“So Jonathan Ross, the trigger-happy officer who shot Good three times in front of the whole world, has plenty…of backing from the top. ‘This is a guy who’s actually done a very, very important job for the United States of America,’ J.D. Vance said on Friday, asking for prayers for Ross. ‘He’s been assaulted, he’s been attacked, he’s been injured because of it. He deserves a debt of gratitude.’”  (Vance also said Ross has, not should have, “absolute immunity.”) Police don’t have this protection.

Alter concludes, “Gratitude? We should be grateful that instead of showing restraint or shooting out the tires, Ross shot Good in the face, orphaning her six-year-old son?” (sarcasm implied)

When you look at the cell phone video that Ross took himself, it shows Good smiling at the masked Ross, saying, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Ten seconds later, he stations himself to the left front of the vehicle, while two other ICE officers approach demanding that she exit the car.  As she turns her tires to seemingly avoid Ross and begins moving forward, he shoots her once through the windshield, then twice through the driver’s side window as she continued forward. 

Then he is seen walking to where Good’s car had crashed, then walking back. After shooting Good, he is recorded on cell phone saying “F*cking bitch.”

Trump claimed that Ross was so violently hurt that he was hospitalized. The many videos show this as clearly a lie, spin for the MAGA world.  

Although ICE currently employs more than 20,000 people, it is looking to hire over 10,000 more with the help of the money Republicans put in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July. That law tripled ICE’s budget for enforcement and deportation to about $30 billion. 

Since the Supreme Court blocked the use of the National Guard, Trump now has a private army that can fly below the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, going mostly to Democratic states. They are lurking outside churches, schools, hospitals, and courtrooms, and going door to door to seek out the undocumented, who are desperate to stay hidden.

My son-in-law just finished the training academy to be a deputy sheriff for Gilpin County, and the amount of legal training on use of force as well as de-escalation techniques he received was impressive. 

My point is this: What kind of training do ICE recruits get in the use of force? Maybe Ross has PTSD from his stint in Iraq, or from being dragged by a vehicle. But is this the type of officer who should be making split second decisions about use of force? Is he locked and loaded with a quick trigger finger? 

The scene is set. It seems it is a matter of time before another “murder” occurs at ICE’s hands.

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin County