What Legal Protections Apply When Federal Agents Use Deadly Force?

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Renee Nicole Good was 37 years old when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross shot her through the windshield of her maroon Honda SUV as she sat behind the wheel on a residential street in south Minneapolis. She died at the scene. Within hours, the Department of Homeland Security called it justified self-defense—Good had allegedly tried to use her vehicle as a weapon against federal agents. Video footage appeared to show something different: a woman trying to drive away, not toward officers.

Vice President J.D. Vance addressed the shooting the next day. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” he said of Ross. “He was doing his job.”

What Vance described—absolute immunity for agents who use deadly force—doesn’t exist as a formal legal doctrine. But in practice, the legal protections stacked around federal law enforcement create something that works like absolute immunity. This is true even when video contradicts their accounts and even when their own colleagues standing beside them didn’t perceive enough threat to draw their weapons.

The Renee Good case exposes how agents operate in a different legal universe than state police. When Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd less than a mile from where Good died, Minnesota prosecutors charged him with murder under state law. They didn’t need permission from federal authorities. They didn’t need to overcome claims of immunity. Chauvin went to prison. But when an immigration agent kills someone in Minneapolis, the legal architecture changes completely—and that architecture is what this article examines.

Three Overlapping Doctrines That Function as Absolute Immunity

Officers don’t receive “absolute immunity” in the technical sense. What they receive is three overlapping doctrines that together make prosecution nearly impossible.

The first layer is the Supremacy Clause—a constitutional rule that says federal law wins when it conflicts with state law. States can’t interfere with officers performing duties. But courts have interpreted this to mean states can only prosecute if the officer was acting outside their job duties AND used excessive force. ICE officers arresting people for immigration violations are performing duties by definition. This means the entire question becomes whether the force used was “clearly wrong or excessive.”

A misconduct expert interviewed by Mother Jones pointed out that Ross was one of four ICE officers at the scene. Same circumstances. Same moment. Same alleged threat. Three officers didn’t fire. Ross did.

Under constitutional law protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, when trained officers experience identical facts but only one perceives a threat requiring deadly force, that’s strong evidence the force wasn’t reasonable. It suggests the officer who fired made a judgment other reasonable officers wouldn’t have made. The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Barnes v. Felix established another problem for Ross: officers can’t create dangerous situations and then claim those dangers justify force. Ross positioned himself in front of Good’s vehicle—a tactical choice that put him in the path of a car he then claimed was trying to kill him.

The second layer is qualified immunity—a legal rule that shields officers from being sued unless they violated an obviously established right. Courts have applied this rule so strictly that officers can escape lawsuits even when they obviously violated someone’s rights, simply because no prior case involved the exact same factual scenario. Shoot someone in their car while three colleagues don’t? Maybe there’s no prior case with that precise fact pattern.

The third layer is the power of prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges. Even if Minnesota prosecutors wanted to charge Ross, and even if they could overcome the Supremacy Clause arguments, they’d need evidence. But the FBI took over the investigation and excluded Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from accessing crime scene evidence, witness interviews, and investigative materials. Without evidence, state prosecutors can’t build a case. Federal prosecutors work for the administration that deployed Ross in the first place.

State Police Face Different Accountability

When Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, Minnesota prosecutors charged him under state criminal statutes. No permission required. No Supremacy Clause arguments. No prosecutors with conflicts of interest controlling the investigation. The state investigated, the state prosecuted, and Chauvin went to prison for 22.5 years.

Minnesota law says officers can use deadly force only when someone poses an immediate danger of death or serious injury. Officers can’t shoot at moving vehicles unless the driver poses an imminent threat beyond merely being in a vehicle. DHS policy says almost the same thing—deadly force only when an officer reasonably believes someone poses an imminent threat of death or serious injury.

A Minnesota state trooper who violated these rules would face immediate state investigation by an agency designed specifically to handle officer-involved shootings. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigates to make sure shootings are handled fairly and the public can trust the results. State prosecutors would have full access to evidence. If they decided to prosecute, they could—no approval needed.

But when Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good, the BCA was initially allowed to participate in a joint investigation with the FBI. Then the FBI reversed course. The BCA reported it was told the investigation would now be “led solely by the FBI” and the state agency “would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said his agency couldn’t meet the investigative standards “Minnesota law and the public demands” without complete access to evidence. The agency withdrew. Governor Tim Walz said it felt “difficult that we will get a fair outcome” when “people in positions of power have already passed judgment—from the president to the vice president to Kristi Noem—and have told things that are verifiably false.”

The Investigation Blockade

The decision to exclude Minnesota investigators wasn’t a technical jurisdictional dispute. It was a deliberate elimination of accountability mechanisms.

Joint investigations happen when federal and state authorities both have a stake in the case. The initial arrangement—BCA and FBI working together—followed normal practice. Then the FBI shut the door.

DHS had already called the shooting justified self-defense hours after Good’s death, before any investigation could possibly conclude whether that characterization was accurate. Officials at the highest levels—the president, vice president, and DHS secretary—had publicly defended the shooting. Then investigators excluded the state agency that might reach a different conclusion.

CNN reported that multiple Department of Homeland Security officials privately expressed shock at the department’s immediate response, seeing it as “a break from precedent that generally points to an investigation before reaching a firm conclusion.” Current and former DHS officials “initially privately questioned the officer’s conduct,” though they cautioned that preceding events remained unclear. One ICE agent told CNN: “I don’t recognize my former agency. This is truly heartbreaking.”

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis was overseeing litigation about the use of riot control weapons against protesters during operations. When the Minneapolis shooting occurred and the FBI excluded state investigators, Ellis expressed hesitation about dismissing the case. She noted that she’d previously found agents “have used excessive force…without justification, often without warning, and even at those who had begun to comply with agents’ orders.”

“It doesn’t give me much comfort in reading news reports that someone who—in some news reports, anyway—was described as a legal observer was shot yesterday in Minneapolis,” Ellis said. She suggested she had “an obligation to protect the interests of the class” and that dismissing the case would eliminate the preliminary injunction restricting agent conduct.

The complete exclusion of Minnesota investigators appears unusual—not merely declining to defer to state prosecutors but actively barring state investigators from accessing any evidence.

Jonathan Ross’s Background and Prior Incident

Jonathan Ross was a member of ICE’s Special Response Team, a specially trained tactical unit. Six months before he shot Renee Good, Ross was involved in another incident where he used force against a driver attempting to flee. In June 2025, Ross broke a vehicle window and reached inside while trying to apprehend a man suspected of immigration violations in Bloomington, Minnesota. The driver accelerated. Ross was dragged approximately 100 yards down the street before being knocked free. During the incident, Ross fired his Taser through the window, but the prongs didn’t incapacitate the driver. Ross was hospitalized but later discharged. A jury subsequently found the driver guilty of assaulting an officer.

According to a misconduct expert: “Ross had shot [with a Taser] through a window before at somebody in the car, and the guy hit the gas, and Ross had stuck his arm through the broken window, and he got cut [and dragged about 100 yards]. And so he was supposedly reacting to that. He’s not an objective officer at that point.”

Constitutional law says an officer’s past trauma shouldn’t make them quicker to use force. But Ross’s prior injury—being dragged 100 yards by a fleeing driver—may have created a psychological predisposition toward force escalation when he encountered another driver in a vehicle.

Ross operated in an agency culture that had become increasingly aggressive. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good’s shooting “an act of domestic terrorism”—treating immigration work like fighting terrorism rather than regular police work. That rhetorical framing affects how officers perceive threats and how quickly they escalate to force.

Accelerated Hiring and Shortened Training

The Trump administration deployed approximately 2,000 agents to Minneapolis for what it called “the largest immigration operation ever” in the city. Agents came from Arizona, Texas, Florida, California, Georgia—parachuted into a single metropolitan area for civil action.

The administration wanted to deploy 12,000 new officers on an accelerated timeline. To meet that target, it shortened training periods and lowered standards. Experts warned that “the administration’s rush to hire and deploy 12,000 new officers is a recipe for more mistakes. Flooding the field with minimally trained agents increases risks for the public, other federal officers, and the agents themselves.”

Former acting ICE director John Sandweg noted that average ERO agents receive “limited” medical training and shootings are “something they have no experience with” given their rarity in civil contexts. When you deploy thousands of inexperienced officers rapidly to high-pressure operations with political demands for results, force escalation becomes more likely.

A December 12 email from Marcos Charles, head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told agents to be “prepared to take appropriate and decisive action should you be faced with an imminent threat.” That language shifted from trying to calm situations first to being ready to use force immediately. Charles added: “I have full faith and confidence that each of you possess the training and knowledge to exercise the appropriate response”—language that could be read as encouraging aggressive responses to ambiguous situations.

Inflated Threat Statistics

The Trump administration justified aggressive tactics by citing dramatic increases in violence against agents. DHS Secretary Noem claimed ICE officers faced an increase in vehicular attacks and more than a 1,000% increase in assaults, along with an 8,000% increase in death threats over the past year.

NPR looked at court records and found that people were charged with assaulting officers about 26% more often than the year before—not 1,000% or 1,300%. Between January 21 and November 21, 2025, there were 163 cases of assault on federal officers filed in five jurisdictions where the administration conducted large-scale operations. That’s a 26% increase from the same period in 2024.

For those numbers to be true, thousands of assaults would have to have happened without anyone being charged. The administration inflated the numbers by roughly 38 times the actual increase. That inflation appears designed to justify aggressive tactics, expansive hiring, and permissive use-of-force policies.

Since the Trump administration’s crackdown began in July 2025, agents have shot people in at least 16 incidents and killed at least four, according to The Trace, a nonprofit outlet covering gun violence. Several of those shot were legal observers, journalists, or people driving away from traffic stops. One day after the Good shooting, immigration officers shot and wounded two people in a vehicle outside a Portland hospital.

Despite this pattern, virtually no agents have faced criminal charges. According to DHS officials’ public statements, no agents have been subject to internal discipline.

Civil Lawsuits and Qualified Immunity

When criminal prosecution is blocked, civil litigation becomes the primary accountability mechanism. Good’s family will likely sue federal officers for violating her constitutional rights—a type of lawsuit called a Bivens action. They might also sue the government for negligence, though that’s harder because the law has many exceptions for police decisions.

Qualified immunity becomes the central obstacle. To overcome it, Good’s family must show the officer violated a constitutional right and that the right was a right that prior court cases had already ruled was protected. The constitutional violation appears demonstrable—the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable seizure, and shooting someone through a windshield while they’re attempting to escape appears unreasonable, particularly when Good wasn’t the subject of any criminal investigation and wasn’t lawfully detained.

Courts now require that a prior case involved nearly identical facts, not that the general principle was illegal. But Good’s case may clear even that high bar. Barnes v. Felix established that officers can’t place themselves in dangerous positions and then claim those self-created dangers justify force. Ross positioned himself in front of Good’s vehicle—a tactical choice that wasn’t required by any duty. The fact that Ross’s three colleagues present at the identical scene didn’t perceive sufficient threat to use force constitutes strong evidence that a reasonable officer wouldn’t have fired.

A misconduct expert told Mother Jones: “If you look at this case carefully, it has all the hallmarks of cases we’ve either won or settled for amounts of money no reasonable person would pay us if we weren’t going to win. It is a garden variety unjustified use of deadly force case. And that’s based on the facts we know now; I bet the case is going to get better.”

Even if Good’s family wins the lawsuit, a settlement doesn’t provide the same accountability as a criminal conviction. The officer faces no incarceration, no professional consequences, and no public finding of wrongdoing in a criminal trial.

In 2010, Border Patrol agents beat, Tasered, and killed 42-year-old Anastasio Hernández Rojas near the San Ysidro Port of Entry. His family received a $1 million civil settlement. Federal prosecutors chose not to charge any agent, even though the coroner ruled it a homicide. An HBO documentary uncovered evidence of a secretive Border Patrol unit designed to downplay use-of-force investigations and a whistleblower claiming officials were instructed to doctor evidence. No criminal charges. No agent fired. No public accountability.

How Other Democracies Handle Federal Law Enforcement

In the United Kingdom, when law enforcement officers discharge firearms—whether federal or local—they’re subject to independent investigation by civilian authorities, not by the police or agencies themselves. The UK’s Independent Office for Police Conduct investigates officer-involved shootings independently. Findings of potential criminality are referred to prosecutors who operate separately from the police chain of command. This keeps prosecutors independent from the administration they’re investigating—removing the conflict of interest.

In Germany, when federal police use lethal force, the state where the conduct occurred retains the power to investigate and prosecute the same conduct. Action at the federal level doesn’t eliminate state accountability. State authorities retain the ability to investigate conduct to ensure accountability under state law. Officers can’t hide behind federalism claims.

In Canada, officers are subject to provincial investigation and prosecution for conduct occurring in the province. Officers can appeal to federal court, but they can’t stop state investigation.

These models keep federal and state authority separate while making sure state investigators aren’t shut out. Agents remain distinct from state officers, receive prosecution when statutes are violated, and receive court review of constitutional questions—while still remaining subject to state investigation, state prosecution under state law, and state constitutional protections.

Possible Reforms

Congress could pass a law requiring independent investigation whenever an agent shoots someone. Rather than permitting the FBI to monopolize investigation of law enforcement conduct, require that any shooting by agents result in automatic investigation by an independent entity. That could be an independent watchdog office separate from the agency being investigated. It could be an independent agency similar to the UK’s Independent Office for Police Conduct. Or it could be state authorities operating alongside investigators at the federal level. The investigating agency must be structurally independent from the agency whose agents are being investigated.

Congress could pass a law letting states prosecute agents for using force in their borders. Rather than leaving this question to Supremacy Clause doctrine, explicitly provide that states may prosecute agents for violations of state law committed in the state. Officers could still appeal to federal court, but couldn’t stop state investigation or prosecution. This would bring American law in line with how other democracies handle this.

Congress could require agencies to discipline officers who use excessive force. Despite evidence that DHS officers systematically violated use-of-force policies, DHS has given no indication that any officer has been disciplined. Establish requirements that violations of agency use-of-force policies result in mandatory discipline. Require statistics on discipline to be publicly reported.

Congress could establish minimum training and hiring standards for agents involved in operations. Prevent the accelerated hiring and abbreviated training that contributed to the Good incident. Require the same training standards as state police academies. Provide training that teaches officers how to calm situations, use only necessary force, and stay safe in civil contexts.

The Supreme Court could change qualified immunity rules so that breaking an agency’s own use-of-force policy counts as a constitutional violation. This would prevent officers from claiming immunity when they violated their own agency’s regulations. Make courts consider whether an officer violated agency policy when deciding qualified immunity cases.

Renee Good’s Children

Renee Nicole Good left three children—ages 15, 12, and 6—when Jonathan Ross’s bullet ended her life on a residential street in south Minneapolis. Her 6-year-old son had been dropped off at school before she encountered agents. Her youngest child was reportedly told by relatives that “there was nobody else in his life.”

Good was a 2020 graduate of Old Dominion University with a degree in English. Friends described her as a poet and writer, deeply compassionate and devoted to her children. She wasn’t the subject of any criminal investigation. She was attempting to document action and may have attempted to drive away from the confrontation.

The legal framework that permitted her death to occur without immediate criminal consequences for the officer responsible reflects specific doctrinal choices. Those doctrines, stacked together, create protections so permissive they function as absolute immunity despite stopping short of that label.

Agents can position themselves in dangerous situations and claim those situations justify force. They can discharge weapons even when colleagues present at identical scenes don’t perceive sufficient threat. They can operate in investigative monopolies that exclude state accountability mechanisms. They can count on prosecutors aligned with their administration to decline charges regardless of evidence.

Hundreds gathered in Minneapolis at the shooting site and at ICE’s local headquarters, demanding accountability and removal of ICE operations from the city. Governor Tim Walz said “ICE needs to go.” Mayor Jacob Frey called for ICE to “get the f*** out” of the city. In Philadelphia, over 1,000 people gathered outside City Hall to protest both the shooting and ICE operations in their region.

But protest hasn’t yet produced the legal reforms necessary to bring agents under meaningful accountability. The choice isn’t between accountability and authority—other democracies maintain law enforcement while preserving accountability. The choice is whether America’s agents will function under the same legal regime that binds state officers, or whether they’ll continue to operate as a semi-accountable force unto themselves.

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