The ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good

Rick Perlstein on Facebook calls our attention to the fact that the kind of disinformation, scorn, and callousness that have been actively pimpled by the post-Reagan rightwing media world continue to be an essential part of the Trumpista cult. (1)

Dave Neiwert, one of the best-informed journalists about the American far right, commented on Rick’s post:

This is what 30 years of Fox News and its Limbaugh-style intentional demonization of over half of the nation for the sake of creating corporate profit has wrought. The face of the ICE murderer is the face of hatred concocted by a lying media system designed to divide the nation for the sake of hollowing out democracy in order to replace it with a kleptocratic oligarchy.

Whenever democratic control is restored to the federal government, ICE is going to have to be thoroughly reformed, purged of assassins and murderers, and ICE officers required to meet at least the training and competence level of major urban police departments.

If the next Democratic President approaches the ICE problem like Joe Biden talked about the Black Lives Matter criticism of murderous cops – “fund, fund, fund the police” in Biden’s phrase, the prospect of getting back even to a pre-Trump level of democracy could take decades.

Cleaning up dirty police departments is nothing new in the US. Oakland (2) and Los Angeles are California cities whose police had to be restrained by federal intervention in order to clean up corruption and violent misconduct by rogue police departments. And there are other examples in other states, as well. It’s not an easy process. But a federal government that is willing to act responsibly to restrain lawless municipal police can fix a lot of problems.

There are more options than one way for reforming ICE. But some things are obvious, like strict training and conduct requirements with some kind of extended supervision analogous to Justice Department or court oversight of rogue municipal police departments. And the Democrats should not do their typical hiding-under-the-covers act, i.e., “No, no, we can’t prosecute ICE murderers, we can’t cut their budget, and we have to frame any criticism of ICE misdeeds and even killings in the context of how much we love and respect the law-breaking ICE goon squads.”

There is good reason to separate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Homeland Security. Having it under Homeland Security – a creepy name for an agency in a democracy – inevitably leads to seeing immigration and refugees as a national danger in themselves.

Heather Cox Richardson discusses the recent Minneapolis murder Renee Nicole Good and its implications in the Trumpian process of implementing, well, fascism. Beginning at 7:40 in the video:

Notes:

(1) Rick Perlstein, Facebook 01/08/2026. (Accessed: 2026-09-01).

(2) Two reporters, Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, have done a book about a crime ring that operated inside the Oakland Police Department that was known by the Ku Klux Klan-like name of The Riders: The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption and Cover Up in Oakland (2023).

(3) Politics Chat, January 8, 2026. Heather Cox Richardson YouTube channel 01/08/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/CQPOHCoTbgE?si=kmwdQQYbU-npy9A9> (Accessed: 2026-09-01).