Renée Good's Family Invokes 1871 Anti-KKK Law in Suing Ice Agent and Trump Officials Over Her Killing

Renée Good's family invoked an 1871 anti-KKK law Thursday, filing two lawsuits in Minnesota over her fatal shooting by an immigration agent and naming Trump officials they say made her killing predictable.

The 1871 Law at the Centre of the Case

One complaint names the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging wrongful death, battery, assault, false imprisonment, and negligence. The second is rarer. It invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era statute written to break up conspiracies that used masked violence to deny civil rights.

Family attorney Benjamin Berkman said Congress passed the law because masked men went in disguise to terrorise their neighbours over race. One hundred and fifty-five years later, he argued, armed agents did the same on a Minneapolis street. The law, he said, 'reaches the agent who fired those shots and every public official who put him on the street that day'.

Suing up the Chain of Command

That theory underpins claims against the shooter and senior officials. The civil-rights suit names US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross alongside White House adviser Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, border czar Tom Homan, former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, Corey Lewandowski, former acting ICE director Todd Lyons, plus 10 unnamed agents.

The filing calls the 7 January shooting 'the predictable and intended product' of Operation Metro Surge, the crackdown that flooded the Twin Cities with federal agents. Data later showed fewer than 25% of those arrested had a criminal conviction. The filings came days after Good's mother and brother testified before Congress about fatal immigration-officer shootings.

What the Bystander Video Showed

Good, a US citizen with no criminal history, was shot inside her Honda Pilot near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue after she and her wife stopped to film agents. Her partner, Becca Good, stepped out to record while Renée stayed at the wheel and sounded her horn. An analysis of bystander footage by The Associated Press found the agent fired twice more at close range through the driver's window.

The complaint says a shot struck Good in the temple and that agents refused her first aid, blocking a bystander who said he was a doctor. 'She was the love of my life,' Becca Good told reporters in her first public remarks since the killing. 'No child should grow up without a parent,' she said about their three children.

The Government's Account of the Killing

Federal authorities called the shooting justified, saying Good tried to run down officers and that Ross fired to protect lives. Homeland Security officials described her actions as an act of domestic terrorism. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz rejected the self-defence account.

The Department of Justice said it declines to comment on pending litigation, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond.

The suits allege Ross broke the Fourth Amendment and DHS policy restricting agents from firing at moving vehicles.

Attorney Antonio Romanucci told reporters that 'our government is killing our citizens without any legal justification'.

A federal judge has yet to rule on any claim.