Outrage Over Renee Good’s Death: Minnesota Poet Responds To Chilling ICE Killings

Five years ago, a jarring video from a Minneapolis street — showing a police officer pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck as he pleaded for air — became a catalyst for one of the most powerful social justice movements in modern America.

Now, visuals from another Minneapolis street, capturing the final moments of Renee Good’s life, have again placed the city at the centre of a national reckoning, reigniting searching questions about police conduct and the use of force in the United States.

People have taken to the streets after the gunshots fired by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent killed Good, whom the Trump administration has called a "domestic terrorist".

However, Good is not the only person that ICE has killed amid their intensified crackdown on immigration. 

At least four people have been killed and seven others injured in these incidents, according to The Trace — a non-profit newsroom focused on gun violence in the US. 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

However, tragically, much of the anger now boiling over in the streets after Good’s killing stems from the perception that her death feels different; because she was a US citizen, and a white US citizen at that, leading to the argument that the ICE agent’s use of lethal force was premature and unjustified.

This begs a question: if skin colour shifts the weight of outrage, do other deaths in the dragnet become acceptable? 

And if so, are human rights fixed privileges that change with the shade of one’s skin?

Bhavana Goparaju, who has lived and worked in Minnesota for over a decade, writes for Outlook: 

Let the rage come out of the permafrost

That lies under the cold ice snow

When it melts

As the bullet hit the thundering skull

And the blood rushing out

let The heat of the blood on the snow

Melt the cold heart

And let the rage come out

As the white skin turns into Kaali

Let those chants echo

Awakening the inner kaali

Let those vigils be Aarti

That she is Kaali

Rage out America

Chant out Ma Kaali