U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good in her SUV during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Wednesday, after giving her an order to get out of the car which she failed to obey, instead trying to leave the scene in her car, resulting in the fatal shooting.
Throughout is coverage thus far, PBS News Hour has leaned heavily on a selection of facts and assumptions to skew against the officer’s defensive shooting action, and ignoring inconvenient facts -- like the fact that Good, a radicalized mother of a toddler, showed up in a dangerous situation to block legal immigration enforcement action, spurred by her wife who urged Good to “drive, baby, drive” before the officer shot at Good three times, killing her.
PBS hype of liberal “outrage” began on Night One of the controversy, when few facts were in. Outraged Democrats were presented as nonpartisan:
Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: State and local officials in Minneapolis are outraged tonight after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman there. Federal officials accuse that woman of trying to run over officers with a vehicle, claiming the shooting was in self-defense.
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: The city's mayor says the video tells a different story….
On Thursday, the show invited on unlabeled former Obama Administration security official Juliette Kayyem, a popular face on the News Hour, who dutifully condemned the Trump Administration’s claims.
Juliette Kayyem: ....she's been accused of lots of things by the White House in terms of, was she engaged in activism, was she trying to run him down? He could have easily -- and some people looking at the videos believed that he actually wasn't in the line of sight of the car -- or the line of impact of the car. And you let the car go on and either pull it over 10 feet away or get the license plate. And so this interaction that results in not one, but multiple bullets being put through the window of an unarmed civilian, who may or may not have known what ICE was expecting of her….
We know now, thanks to the cop’s camera phone, that Good was "engaged in activism" and did know what ICE expected of her. They yelled at her to get out of the car.
Kayyem went on to bash President Trump and Vice President JD Vance for “a very shameful maligning of who [Good] is as a human being -- I mean, she's a mother and she was unarmed, and they called her a domestic terrorist….”
Minnesota-based reporter Fred de Sam Lazaro lionized Good on Thursday.
Fred de Sam Lazaro: A vigil and a makeshift memorial grew Wednesday evening near the site of the shooting, honoring Good, whose family and friends describe her as a Christian who participated in mission trips, a poet who loved to sing, and a loving mother of three. At the memorial today, where protesters have put up makeshift barricades, Somali immigrant Deqa Adan came to pay her respects.
Another unchallenged activist spouted:
Dieu Do, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee: The place that Renee was killed yesterday was six blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered. The law enforcement response is the same, to lie, to cover up and to spin a different story on really what actually happened.
The field reporter again linked the ICE shooting to the hallowed name of another liberal Minnesota martyr, George Floyd.
Not even the release of video from the cop’s phone, which knocked down some of the liberal assumptions surrounding the shooting, made a dent in PBS’s hostile anti-ICE tone Friday. De Sam Lazaro again rounded up the views of some local lefties and acceding to their "fears" of ICE.
Fred de Sam Lazaro: Nicole Lundheim had just arrived to pick up her daughter after school and captured the melee on her phone. The Department of Homeland Security said agents were chasing a U.S. citizen who impeded their work and the pursuit ended at the school. It said no students or staff were targeted but that a man calling himself a teacher assaulted officers. Lundheim recalls the episode very differently.
Nicole Lundheim: Is -- it almost seemed intentional to create -- to linger long enough to create a crowd, to create chaos.
de Sam Lazaro: And with reports of immigration enforcement efforts continuing across the Twin Cities today, Lundheim says the level of concern is rising.
Lundheim: So students who are immigrants, students who aren't immigrants, students who have legal standing to be here, but maybe are Black or brown, they are afraid because they could become in the crosshairs, because their best friend, their aunt, their uncle, family members -- like, the fear is visceral.
de Sam Lazaro: Fear that may only rise in coming days, as federal officials say they will reexamine the cases of more than 5,000 refugees living in the state….
