An ICE agent shot and killed a woman named Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week.
Senator Cory Booker’s response? More training and body cameras for immigration agents.
Not abolish ICE. Not defund the deportation machine. Body cameras. Never mind that Ross was literally filming the interaction himself with a phone.
WHAT’S GOING ON: The New Jersey Democrat is introducing legislation that would require federal law enforcement to wear body cameras during immigration operations and establish minimum training standards.
One bill would specifically prohibit “accelerated or abbreviated trainings.” Booker called the shooting a “reckless and avoidable tragedy” and blamed Trump’s Department of Homeland Security for “using millions of taxpayer dollars on ads that glorify violence, hiring unqualified candidates, and rushing them onto the streets without adequate training.”
Here’s the problem: the agent who killed Good—Jonathan Ross—is an 18-year veteran. He wasn’t rushed through abbreviated training. He had nearly two decades of experience, and he still approached a car with its engine running (a protocol violation, according to current and former DHS agents who spoke to The Wall Street Journal) while filming himself holding a gun.
Body cameras didn’t save Renee Nicole Good. Better training wouldn’t have either.
Reports say ICE blocked first responders from getting to Good as quickly as possible, even though she was still alive by the time they finally got to her. You can’t train that away.
OF COURSE: The White House is standing firmly behind Ross and using its resources to investigate Good’s grieving widow instead.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Good a “lunatic” and said the officer was “absolutely justified in using self-defense.” JD Vance went on a sick rant of his own.
ZOOM OUT: DHS has hired 7,114 new ICE employees since Trump’s second term began, with a goal of 10,000 new agents backed by $30 billion from Congress. The Atlantic reported that training has been slashed from five months to 47 days. That’s thousands of barely-trained officers with guns flooding the streets—and Democrats are responding with… procedural tweaks.
BOTTOM LINE: Booker’s bills are dead on arrival in this Congress anyway. But even as messaging, this is a failure.
Republicans aren’t shy about what they want—a mass deportation apparatus with minimal oversight and maximum violence. Democrats keep responding by trying to make that apparatus more professional.
They’re negotiating the terms of the brutality instead of opposing it. Until they’re willing to say “abolish ICE” out loud, they’re just helping build a kinder, gentler deportation machine—one that still kills people like Renee Nicole Good.