The woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis Wednesday morning was an award-winning poet and a 37-year-old mother of three, described by her mother as “loving, forgiving and affectionate” and an “amazing human being.”
Renee Nicole Macklin Good was shot inside her car in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from where she lived with her partner, her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
On a now-private Instagram account that featured a pride flag emoji, Good described herself as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and s—ty guitar strummer from Colorado [who was] experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”
Originally from Colorado Springs, Good graduated from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., with a degree in English in December 2020. Earlier that year, she won an Academy of American Poets Prize — a prestigious award for undergraduate students — for a poem titled “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”
“This is yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation,” the university’s president, Brian O. Hemphill, told The Washington Post. “May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace.”
Good, who had recently moved to the Twin Cities with her partner, once co-hosted a podcast with the late comedian Tim Macklin, her husband at the time. Macklin died in 2023 at age 36. The couple shared a 6-year-old child, the Star Tribune reported, citing an interview with the child’s paternal grandfather.
She also had two other children from a previous marriage: a 15-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son.
Public records show she recently shared a home with a woman in Kansas City, Missouri, where the two started a business last year called B. Good Handywork.
Good was killed about a mile from where George Floyd was killed in 2020.
Cellphone video taken by bystanders shows an ICE agent walking toward an SUV stopped in the middle of the road, grabbing the handle and telling the driver to open the door. As the Honda Pilot begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer is seen firing at least two shots into the vehicle at close range. Good died of gunshot wounds to her head.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem justified the incident, saying the unnamed ICE officer “did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation, and took actions to defend himself and defend his fellow law enforcement officers.”
The shooting drew immediate national attention and renewed scrutiny of ICE’s use of force, with advocates and lawmakers calling for accountability.
“Like so many Minnesotans, I am heartbroken and angry,” U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat, posted on X late Wednesday night. “It is incredibly scary when a United States citizen can be shot and killed in her car by federal law enforcement. And it is disgusting when President Trump and Secretary Noem recklessly spin us with a story that this woman was dangerous and a domestic terrorist, apparently excusing this violence with no investigation.”
Early Thursday, hundreds of demonstrators held a protest outside a federal building in Minneapolis that houses an immigration court, chanting “shame” and “murder” at armed, masked federal officers, Reuters reported. Some of the officers deployed tear gas and pepper balls against the protesters.
A GoFundMe page set up in support of “Renee Good’s wife and son” had raised nearly $550,000 as of late Thursday morning.
Mattie Weiss, the fundraiser organizer, described Good as “pure sunshine and love.”
With News Wire Services
