(AFP) – The brother of a US woman shot dead by a federal agent in Minneapolis said Tuesday he is disappointed by a lack of change since her death, which fueled outrage at President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Renee Good, 37, was killed in early January as she protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. The Trump administration claimed the officer who killed her opened fire in self-defense despite conflicting video evidence.
“In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation, thinking that perhaps Nee’s death would bring about change in our country, and it has not,” Luke Ganger, Good’s brother, told the US Congress. “The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation,” he said, apparently referencing the aggressive immigration raids in the midwestern city.
“This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents. These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever,” Ganger said. Two weeks after Good was killed, another US citizen, Alex Pretti, was shot dead by federal agents in late January, also in Minneapolis. The killings have become a rallying cry for protests against Trump’s mass deportation raids led by masked and heavily-armed officers.
Another brother of Good, Brent Ganger, also offered emotional testimony at Tuesday’s forum on the use of force by US immigration agents. “There are billions of people who now know her (Good’s) name, and it would be so easy to fall into the false belief that great, heroic things are required to overcome difficult things in the world. But as Tolkien wrote, it’s the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay, small acts of kindness and love,” he said.
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