The killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on January 7 in Minneapolis, Minnesota has given further impetus to a national movement protesting the unconstitutional arrests of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike by the Trump administration.
Along with the nationwide No Kings demonstrations that have mobilized millions in recent months, opposition to the White House’s policies on immigration is one of the two most important direct challenges to the current government and its policies.
Two prominent issues in the 2024 presidential race contributed significantly to Trump’s electoral victory. The first was the precarious state of the U.S. economy with on-going inflation and a generalized concern about the affordability of basic consumer needs, such as food, housing and health care. The second was Trump’s call to deport an estimated 15 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
The president has lost significant public support on both fronts. A recent CNN poll found that 58% of those questioned consider the first year of Trump’s term to have been a failure, with 55% declaring that the economic conditions have worsened since he took office in January 2025. An addition 9% believe that the president has not done enough to reduce prices on essential goods. This includes half of the Republicans polled, who state that Trump needs to do more to address the issue of inflation and affordability.
Polls measuring voters’ opinions about the White House’s immigrant policies are even worse. In a recent Axios survey, 57% of those polled disapprove of the way that ICE is enforcing immigration laws while only 40% approve of the government’s actions.
One of the masterminds behind’s Trump’s unpopular immigration polices is Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security. Miller has directed the militarization of immigration enforcement through the deployment of masked federal agents often operating in unmarked vehicles to major cities that have voted for Democratic mayors in recent elections.
They have been supported by other federal agencies along with backup and logistical support from the National Guard to fulfill a Trump-induced quota of deporting a million undocumented workers per year. To reach that goal the government has carried out a campaign of racial profiling, sweeping through urban areas, stopping non-white people on the streets, and demanding that they show proof of their U.S. citizenship. Most of those detained are quickly deported without due process, either to their country of origin, or to a third country which has agreed to take thousands of expelled people in exchange for generous financial subsidies provided by the Trump administration.
To implement this draconian policy, the Republican majority in the U.S. Congress authorized $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security in July 2025 for this mega campaign. The government has lowered hiring qualifications and provided inadequate training on how to apprehend and detain undocumented workers to fulfill the need to employ thousands of new ICE agents. This has resulted in thousands of complaints about the violation of constitutional protections and the illegal arrest of U.S. citizens in these urban dragnets.
Nonetheless, since January 2025, 270,000 people have been arrested at the border while the Trump administration has deported another 230,000 who had been detained inside the country. This is a figure higher than the number of those deported during the entire four years of the previous Biden administration, but it remains far below the goal of deporting a million persons per year.
Communities throughout the country have responded by organizing grassroots efforts to protect vulnerable immigrants from the presence of ICE agents. When government agents arrive in a neighborhood, U.S. citizens and legal residents use whistles to warn immigrants of the imminent danger of arrest, allowing many to flee or hide. At the same time, neighbors surround government vehicles to block arrests and to shout “shame” at agents who are detaining those caught up in these sweeps.
That was the scenario that led ICE agent Jonathan Ross to fire three rounds into the car of Renne Good as she and her partner peacefully protested the arrest of undocumented workers. Almost immediately after the killing took place, Kristi Noem, the Director of the Department of Homeland Security, announced that Good had attempted to run down Ross in her car and was a leftwing sympathizer involved in “terrorist” activities. Noem’s claims contradict taped video footage showing that Good had steered her car away from the ICE agent who, nevertheless, proceed to shoot her at close range.
Vice President J.D. Vance also weighed in on the incident claimed that ICE agents had absolute immunity from any prosecution for actions they carry out “in the line of duty,” although prominent constitutional lawyers refute that claim.
Doubling down on the charge that Good was a terrorist, the Department of Justice refused to allow local law officials in the city of Minneapolis or the state of Minnesota to participate in the federal investigation into Good’s death, leading many to conclude that the Trump administration will find that Ross acted appropriately.
At the same time, the Department of Justice has authorized investigations into Becky Good, Renee Good’s wife, for her alleged connections to leftwing groups attempting to interfere in government immigration enforcement. As a result, a group of federal prosecutors from Minnesota have resigned from their positions because they objected to carrying out the investigation..
Trump’s administration has also announced that it is investigating Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fray and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate in the 2024 elections, for allegedly obstructing justice by criticizing the ICE raids in their state.
Both Democratic politicians have made forceful statements condemning the Trump administration’s actions but have called on their residents to protest peacefully and avoid interfering with ICE’s detentions. Legal experts argue that Fray and Walz were using their constitutional right to free speech; and, since they have never been physically present at any protest which have involved altercation with ICE agents, they cannot be held responsible for the action of demonstrators.
Trump’s Unabashed Xenophobia
Many observers consider that sending of thousands of ICE agents to Minnesota has been an act of retaliation against a state that voted against Trump in the last three elections. Minnesota is also the home to 90,00 Somali refugees who fled the civil war in their homeland in the early 1990s. Approximately 95% living in Minnesota are U.S. citizens. They have been a favorite target of the Trump administration.
The U.S. president made no secret of his contempt for Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean, who have come to the United States to see political asylum or to improve their economic situation. During the 2024 election campaign, Trump made false claims during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris that Haitian refugees living in Ohio and legally working in local industries and the service sector were stealing and eating residents’ cats and dogs. Although these claims were quickly discredited, Trump’s supporters continued to believe in these statements. The Republican candidate had no qualms in repeating these lies in the last days of the presidential race. He had previously referred to African and Caribbean nations as “shit hole countries” in a closed-door meeting in the White House.
When investigative journalists reported last year that members of the Somali community in Minnesota had fraudulently bilked the government out of millions of dollars in welfare funds, Trump used the news to justify sending 2,000 ICE agents into the state to supposedly investigate the scam. However, instead of deploying specialist in accounting and administrative fraud, ICE agents began to systematically terrorize Minneapolis, where most of the Somalis live. Masked men with army combat uniforms and equipment entered people’s homes without legal search warrants. They sought out undocumented parents at schools when they were picking up their children. ICE agents have used pepper spray and tear gas on protesters and those filming ICE’s agents’ actions.
Resistance to ICE
Internet postings showing the on-going violence of Department of Homeland Security employees have contributed to the public outrage against Trump’s policy nationwide. Instagram reels documenting similar abuses from California to New York have also fueled similar acts of solidarity with targeted immigrants throughout the country, not just in major cities but also in small towns and rural communities.
What is especially notable about these gestures is the multi-ethnic and racial makeup of those who are monitoring ICE’s actions, supporting their non-citizen neighbors, and protesting in the streets. Although there is a long tradition of racism and xenophobia against immigrants in the United States dating back to the mid-nineteenth century and reflected in the political support that Trump mobilized since he announced his first run for the presidency in 2015, this defense of undocumented, hard-working residents is notable and politically significant.
In response to the on-going mobilizations against ICE’s actions in Minnesota, last week Trump threatened to employ the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed him to send in U.S. armed forces to Minnesota to quell a supposed rebellion. However, the backlash to his policies have been so forceful and the images of state violence on social media so shocking that for the moment Trump has backed down from that threat. Nonetheless, given the president’s volatile decision-making style, he could change his mind at moment’s notice.
When political analysts studied the results of the 2024 elections, they noted that Trump seemed to have picked up support among Black males, Latinos, and young men. However, all those gains have seemingly washed against since he promised to uphold the Constitution on January 20, 2025. It seems that many African-Americans who backed Trump in 2024 have recoiled at his policies eliminating civil rights protections and social service benefits for Blacks. Many Latino voters find it hard to support the racial profiling that targets people of color and treats them with violence when attempting to detain them. Young men nationwide seem repelled by the government’s inhumane immigrant policies.
Trump is in trouble. The mismanagement of the economy, the harsh policies against hard-working immigrants, his on-going practice of making up statistics and lying to the America public, and the constant chaos originating from the White House—from threats to conquer Greenland to the seizure of Venezuelan oil—has made the U.S. president politically vulnerable.
Although attacks on immigrants may distract attention from rising inflation or the failure of the government to release the Epstein Files, as required by an act of Congress, Trump seems to have support beyond his loyal base. Despite his aggressive bluster and outlandish threats at home and abroad, Trump’s anti-immigrant measures seem a desperate act of someone of the defensive.
All of which bodes badly for Republicans, who at this moment, seem likely to lose control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in the upcoming November 3rd congressional elections. Trump’s domestic and foreign policies may also doom any Republican presidential bid in 2028.
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