Tensions Flare in the U.S. as ICE Executes Unarmed Citizen: A New Paramilitary Force Under the Trump Administration?
North America, Western Europe and Oceania , Ground
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel on December 6 executed a 37 year old a resident of the Twin Cities, Renee Nicole Good, during an incident that was captured on film and has ignited significant tensions within the United States. The mother-of-three was shot dead in the head during an ICE operation in Minneapolis, prompting calls for the agency’s personnel to leave the state. Footage showed Good inside her Honda Pilot outside her house surrounded by ICE personnel, one of whom opened fire and shot her in the head after she began to move the vehicle. When her neighbour, a medic, sought to administer first aid, she was blocked from doing so, with the lack of medical care leading to Good’s death from her injuries. Although Federal officials have claimed that Good was seeking to ram them with her vehicle when she was shot, analysts have widely questioned this assertion citing on video evidence of the incident.
Although ICE is a civilian federal law-enforcement agency, it has increasingly exhibited several traits commonly associated with paramilitary organisations. These include militarised equipment and tactics, use of body armour, helmets, assault rifles, armoured vehicles and tactical entry teams, and dynamic raids using stacked formations and forced entry. It also uses a hierarchical, centralised chain of command, with operational planning that looks closer to military tasking than to traditional local policing. Its operations without local law enforcement participation, in residential neighbourhoods, and using surprise raids, has created widespread perceptions that it functions more like an expeditionary force rather than a community-based police agency. As a result, although it is officially a militarised civilian law-enforcement agency, its several common characteristics with paramilitary forces have contributed to the significant controversies surrounding it. These controversies emerged from early 2025 as the organisation significantly expanded both its manpower and its operations in residential areas.
The execution of Renee Nicole Good was far from the first controversy involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, with multiple shootings of unarmed civilians having taken place in the past. The standards used to recruit for the agency and the training standards of personnel, having long been criticised as sub-standard, with multiple U.S. senators having formally raised concerns with the Department of Homeland Security regarding how hiring standards and training protocols are being maintained. These concerns deepened as some recruits were found in training to have disqualifying criminal backgrounds or to have failed failed drug testing. Nevertheless, the widespread and systemic issues stemming from illegal immigration have led these issues to be overlooked to allow the agency to clamp down on illegals and associated human trafficking activities in major cities. Supporters of ICE’s escalated operations have argued that its paramilitary characteristics and recent expansion are necessary to respond to the severity of the threat posed by illegal migration.
"Executes" ?
ReplyDeleteThat's hyperbole, and deliberate disinformation from Russian Military Watch.
And that convicted felon, women abuser wants to take action on Iran for killing their protesters. A set of rules for the rich and powerful and another for the common people....sounds familiar?
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