After months of Supreme Court sanctioned racial profiling, chaos infused raids, and detentions of U.S. citizens, the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good has brought the national debate over ICE to a fever pitch. On Wednesday, January 7, the mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Instant Reactions

Mere hours after the shots were fired, Trump administration officials not only offered a staunch defense of the officer involved, but labeled Good a “domestic terrorist”. However, the White House spin goes up in smoke when you watch the video of the incident. Good clearly motions for ICE to drive around her, before agents tug on her door and demand that she gets out of her car. Multiple angles show Good pulling away, not coming close to running over an officer, who already has his pistol drawn. He then shoots Good at point blank range three times, with two shots coming after the car has already passed him.

Donald Trump posted his reaction on Truth Social around 3:30pm, remarking that it is “hard to believe he is alive,” referring to the officer, who is seen walking around unharmed in the video. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin characterized the shooting as defensive in nature and the incident as an act of domestic terrorism, a sentiment echoed by secretary Kristi Noem.

Elected Democratic officials offered a very different reaction to the event. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey dismissed the idea that the shooting was self-defense as “bull****” and told ICE to “get the f*** out.” Minnesota governor Tim Walz expressed similar outrage at the White House, while urging protestors to remain peaceful.

What Happens Next?

What happened on Wednesday has already sparked protests in cities across the country, including New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. There are many questions that will be raised in the wake of the shooting, not least of all: Why has the Trump administration been so quick to defend the indefensible? Well… This is exactly what they wanted.

The deployment of ICE in Minneapolis comes after a right-wing media firestorm over Somalian immigrants and a youtube video that “exposes” welfare fraud through daycare centers. Federal prosecutors have uncovered large-scale fraud in Minnesota, and there is no question that these perpetrators should be held accountable, be they Somali or otherwise. However, Elon Musk and other right-wing media persons have used the incident to push for mass deportations (and denaturalization) of immigrants who are in the country legally. The added attention on the Somali community in Minnesota gave the Trump administration a pretext for a large-scale deployment of ICE in the state’s capital.

Chaos and Consolidation

Ten years into Trump’s career as a politician and the media still can not seem to agree on how to cover him. Do you cover his administration’s brazen statements and risk legitimizing them? Or do you ignore them and allow them to be normalized? Additionally, you will hear the paradoxical idea that the administration is utterly incompetent, while at the same time shrewdly ushering in authoritarianism.

Through all of this, at least one thing has remained consistent in Trump’s second term: the consolidation of executive power through the constant attacking of the judiciary, legislature, media, and education system. Due to this, even the most outlandish claims of the Trump administration have to be taken seriously on some level.

Let’s take Stephen Miller for example. Miller is likely the most influential deputy chief of staff in White House history, widely credited for being the architect behind the administration’s immigration policy, including smash and grab ICE raids. Miller has publicly mulled the idea of invoking the insurrection act multiple times. The insurrection act is an 1807 law that allows for the national deployment of federal troops to quell what the president deems an insurrection. Trump and Miller have both claimed cities like Portland are under the control of “left-wing terrorists”, and the insurrection act would allow for a rapid crackdown on any kind of demonstrations.

The idea of invoking a 19th century law in order to have the military repress American cities is dangerous enough, but put into the context of what happened in Minneapolis, it paints an even darker picture. ICE recently embarked on a $100 million recruitment campaign, specifically targeting fans of UFC and Nascar, members of gun rights advocacy groups, and right-wing militias. This, combined with a lack of transparency in training procedures, means violence and chaos are all but inevitable. The Trump administration knows that ICE’s violent tactics will provoke visceral responses from protesters and politicians alike, and it revels in them.

Nationwide Response

Protests of ICE have been ongoing throughout the first year of the administration, but it seems as the murder of Renee Good has brought the issue to the precipice of political debate once again. Reactions to the incident are still fresh, but extended large scale protests appear to be imminent. The incident took place less than a mile away from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020, which sparked nationwide protests, that were much maligned by Trump and other republicans.

History seems to be repeating itself in a dark and twisted way, but it is unknown how the Trump administration will respond to demonstrations. It seems as though, the more protests that break out, the more pushback from democratic officials, the more the administration will feel emboldened to invoke the insurrection act or move to repress demonstrators. From there, the possibilities grow dark and seemingly limitless: martial law, canceled elections, and other outcomes that would have once been unthinkable.

While jumping from what happened in Minneapolis to martial law is a purely a hypothetical, violence and chaos seem to be a feature and not a bug of the Trump administration’s ICE raids across America.

*The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of Narratix Press*