Today, Explained - Can anyone stop ICE?

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

The Trump administration says Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have "immunity" in Minneapolis. That could mean few — or no — consequences for the agent who shot Renee Good. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru and Danielle Hewitt, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. A Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent pepper sprays a protestor in south Minneapolis. Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of this video coming out of Minneapolis is telling a story about the surge of ICE agents that started last week after Renee Good was killed. Another controversial video has emerged of ICE. This time, the agents are making an arrest, and it turns out the people being arrested were U.S. citizens. These are observers making sure that kids can walk home from school without being fucking taken apart by the fucking horrible Gestapo that we have here. A group of men approached a woman at a bus stop. pulled her aside and then walked her into a vehicle. The polling is also telling a story. Support for ICE is dropping.

And more Americans than ever before, 46% told economist UGov pollsters, they want ICE abolished. Meanwhile, the messaging from the White House is that ice has immunity. So what does that mean for the people, some of them citizens, that ICE agents are dragging out of cars and workplaces and off of streets around Minneapolis? We have answers ahead on today. explained. This is today explained. Madison McVan is a reporter at the Minnesota Reformer. She's been riding along with Minneapolis residents who are tailing ICE officers in their

city to try and distract and disrupt enforcement. Madison, what's that been like? It's been intense. The idea is that if residents follow ICE and record them, that they can possibly prevent arrest from taking place at all. And is it working? The people I rode along with think it is working. They basically say if we follow ICE and we record them, they're a lot less likely to get out of their cars and start asking people for their citizenship documentation and that kind of thing. Tell me what you've experienced when you've been in the car with these people. There's usually one person driving and then a second person manning the phones.

And so the passenger is following along with a group chat. they're on a group call with other people in the neighborhood who are doing the same thing so they can correspond about where they're seeing ice and notify each other when someone finds ice and starts following the vehicle. Where are they? Where are they? This car? They in front of me. They're in front of me. Either I'm tweaking of that camp. This kind of plays out a pattern that I've seen over and over now, which is that the observers start following an ice vehicle. The ice vehicle starts. basically identifies themselves as federal officers by checking to see if they're being followed.

They turn into a side street or they do an aggressive maneuver or they start weaving through parking lots seeming to make sure they're being followed. And then at some point they stop the vehicle. The observers stop behind them. The ice agents get out of the car, surround the vehicle and tell the observers to stop following them, that they're obstructing ice operations and that they may be arrested. if they continue following. I did not.

So please be on your way and stop impeding or you will be arrested. You've been warned that you're continuing to follow us and you're breaking a lot of, uh, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Hell no. Nope. We warned you, sir. Nope. When I was riding along with a pair of observers, they were following an ICE vehicle and that

exact thing happened. Ice officers got out of their vehicles. They surrounded the car. And one officer told the driver, stop following us or will arrest you. The observers decided to continue to continue. following the car and the ice vehicle drove straight to the address of one of the observers that was in the car. So it seemed like they were doing some kind of looking up of the identity of the person who owned the vehicle and then driving to their home address. The ice vehicle stopped at the observer's home and then kept going.

And so the observers decided to continue following the vehicles. Two of the vehicles in the convoy split up and the observers decided to follow the third ice car. third ice car. As they were following that third ice car, agents circled back to the observer's house that they had just stopped in front of and went and banged on the door. The observer's wife was home. She was terrified and she pretended she wasn't home. And neighbors started coming out of their houses once they realized ice was next door, blowing whistles. Some people stopped and honked horns and eventually the agents left. So we were planning on publishing this article about the ride-along on Monday.

I had a call scheduled with those two observers, Patty and Elle, on Sunday night, to just tie up loose ends and do a fact check before publication. But Patty wasn't getting back to me. And she has an iPhone, and I was texting her, and the texts were green. So I started thinking maybe something was off. I started looking around on social media, and I saw a video from several hours prior that showed Patty getting her car window smashed in by an ICE agent. She was pulled out of the car window smashed in by an ICE agent.

She was pulled out of the video. the car and handcuffed and taken to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, which is where ICE has headquartered in the Twin Cities. Three ICE agents that were in the car with me immediately started taunting me. The driver of the car said, you guys got to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian is dead. She did get released on Sunday night without charges, along with the other observer that had been in the car with her that day. So I went and met up with her on Monday and talked to her about her experience being held by ice, and then that became part of the story, too. Much of the country was not paying attention to Minnesota before Renee Good was killed by an ICE

agent last week. Was this going on before that? There was an immigration enforcement surge, starting in December. So that was when patrols really started ramping up. But even before that, people were organized in rapid response networks, and starting when Trump took over for his second term. The idea behind the rapid response networks was that if we see an ice action taking place, we can notify a bunch of people in the neighborhood, and the neighbors can respond to film ice, to inform people of their rights, and to protest. But with this big surge in ice agents arriving, they've kind of changed tactics. It seems like now the ice agents are traveling in smaller groups. They're conducting arrests quickly. They're really trying to get in and out before people have

time to respond in mass and start protesting. So that's why the rapid response networks have shifted more towards a proactive approach following ICE agents in hopes of preventing raids or arrests before they even happen. The Trump administration has suggested that the people doing this are organized activists who have, I don't know, possibly mendacious goals. You tell me about them, though. Who are these people? How did they get organized? Well, I think this is where it's relevant to mention that Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, you know, less than a mile from where an ice agent shot and killed Renee Good. So this neighborhood has been organized before. They've mobilized in mass against police brutality before. So I think that there's already a culture,

particularly in the south side of Minneapolis, of organization and protest. The people who are doing this come from all walks of life. We're seeing churches get involved in them. We're seeing churches get involved in we're seeing parents organize with people whose children go to the same schools so that they can be standing outside during dismissal or so that they can escort immigrant parents when they're dropping off their children at school. It's people who have a lot of time and identify as activists, and it's also people who are commuting to work in the suburbs saying, let me take a different route today to see if I spot ice and I'll let you know if I see anything. Do you know if Renee Goodwin? was one of these people?

We don't know the details of her involvement in any of these networks. The people I talked to who lived in her neighborhood, who were involved in some of these rapid response groups, said they did not know her. But it's important to note that it's possible she could have been in the group and they wouldn't have known because everyone uses anonymous nicknames. So it's possible she was there using an anonymous nickname, but I haven't seen any evidence of that yet.

After Renee Good was killed by the ICE agent, it has seems like things in Minneapolis have become pretty chaotic. How have these people changed their tactics at all since she was killed? Are they doing anything differently? I think the killing of Renee Good has really only strengthened the resolve of a lot of the people who are already involved in this. And it's driven more people to try to join the movement. I think a lot of people who are protesting ICE or who are going out on patrols are asking. asking themselves what they are willing to risk for this movement, knowing that someone was shot while protesting ICE. You're a journalist. So, of course, you're sort of looking at all sides of this debate in Minneapolis. What do you make of the argument from ICE agents that this is

threatening, that people following them in cars feels like a threat and that it shouldn't be happening? Well, I think that's part of the point. I think the people on the ground here many of them feel that this is an occupied city. And they want to show that they are unhappy with that. They want to try to disrupt ICE operations within the bounds of the law to protect their immigrant neighbors. That's how they see it. So I'm not surprised that ICE agents feel threatened by this. I think that's part of the goal.

That's very interesting because as you know, the Trump administration has tried to paint Renee Good and others like her as a danger. to the city itself. Christy Noem called Renee Good, a domestic terrorist. This was an act of domestic terrorism. This vehicle was used to hit this officer. It was used as a weapon. Vice President J.D. Vance has called this classic terrorism. This is classic terrorism. And we cannot say that when a far-left fringe is inciting violence against our brave law enforcement officials, that we're no longer going to enforce the law. How do you make sense of statements like that based on what you're seeing, and the activists who are doing this kind of work? I think it's important to remember that at least the activists I've been with

are committed to doing this within the bounds of the law. So it's really this gray area between what's considered obstruction in a legal sense and what is practically obstruction of ICE's work. You know, honking horns and following them is not physically blocking them from making an arrest, but it certainly discourages them from doing so. So that's kind of where a lot of the action is happening, And when it comes to Renee Good, it's unclear what exactly her involvement may have been in any kind of organized movement to protest. But I think what her action show is that the people of Minneapolis, collectively, at least most of them, it feels like, have decided that when they see ICE, they're taking action and whatever form feels right for them.

That was Madison McVan. she's a reporter with the Minnesota reformer. Coming up, does the long arm of the law reach ICE? Support for today explained comes from Vanta. Vanta says if you run a business, you know how important it is to keep your customers trust. Frankly, says Vanta, maintaining that trust can make or break your business. Makes sense. But the more your business grows, adds Vanta, the more complex your security and compliance tools can get. And left unchecked Vanta ads, that can turn into business chaos and Furthermore, chaos isn't exactly something that customers trust, nor is it a great security strategy. That's where Vanta comes in, says Vanta. Vanta says you can think of them as you're always on AI-powered security expert who can scale with you.

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Hear your first this year with Shopify by your side. This is today explained. Ian Milheiser, you cover the Supreme Court for Vox. A woman in Minnesota is dead and there is video of her killing at the hands of an ice agent. The first response from many thinking Americans was there will be a legal way of dealing with what happened here. There will be accountability. Why is that our response? The whole point of legal accountability is to deter people from doing bad things.

things. You know, this isn't the only reason I don't break into my neighbor's home, but one reason I don't break into my neighbor's home is I know that if I do, I will be arrested. You know, or for that matter, like, they recently put a speeding camera on the road outside my home. I drive slower now. And the reason why is because I know that if I scoge over the speed limit, that camera is going to catch me, and I will face consequences for it, legal consequences for it. And this is a question that the Supreme Court has been wrestling with for quite some time, is when do we want law enforcement officers to feel like if they behave badly, they will fear legal consequences? All right. Let's talk about the investigation in Minneapolis. What do we know at this point? We know it's pretty splintered.

So normally the way something like this would work is that federal law enforcement officers, officers would work with the state police in order to determine what happened and if any criminal charges need to be brought. There are several reasons why the federal investigation is looking like it's not serious. One is that they appear to have kicked the state police out of the investigation. The state is no longer allowed to cooperate the federal government. The state, the federal government apparently is not sharing information with state police. And that's a big red flag. On top of that, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that he doesn't think a civil rights investigation into the shooting itself is warranted. And on top of that, six prosecutors in the

U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota resigned in protest because apparently the U.S. attorney wanted the investigation to focus on Becca Good, the wife of the victim. So, you know, it really looks like this federal investigation is not just a sham, but potentially something worse, because they may be looking to harass the widow here. And that leaves open the question of whether the state government is going to be able to conduct a thorough investigation without federal cooperation. We call on the FBI to share the evidence with the force investigations unit at the BCA and have this be a legitimate and trusted investigation. Minnesota itself seems to be, you know, indicating that it wants to conduct an investigation.

They have requested that people who have information or who have video or photos of the event to submit that information to our office. But it's unclear just how effective the state's investigation is going to be if the feds will not cooperate. So we have two investigations, one of which may not be a serious investigation, and the other one may be state police, you know, trying to investigate with both arms tied behind their backs. Let's talk about what we are hearing from the federal government. So Vice President J.D. Vance, who has a law degree from Yale, if I'm not mistaken, said an astonishing amount before an investigation had even begun here. I can believe that her death is a tragedy while

also recognizing that it's a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers. But he has been very clear that the ICE agent involved, Jonathan Ross, has absolute immunity. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job. What does the vice president mean? I mean, he needs to go back to law school if he thinks that that's the appropriate term. So absolute immunity is a term that is used in civil lawsuits, so not in criminal investigation. Like when you have a private party suing another person typically for money, the Supreme Court has said that three classes of individuals have absolute immunity from those suits.

None of them are law enforcement. Those three classes of individuals are the sitting president, judges, and prosecutors. Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot Renee Good, is neither the president. of the United States, a judge or a prosecutor. So absolute immunity does not apply to him. There are some doctrines that apply to criminal investigations. Probably the most important one is a doctrine that emerges from a case called Enri-Neagle. It's an 1890 case, so this is really old, and it involves a federal law enforcement officer who shot a man in. in the course of duty, the state of California wanted to prosecute him, and Neagle set the rule that in most but not all cases, when a federal law enforcement officer is acting within the scope of their duties, the state cannot prosecute them.

Okay. So that means that this officer, even though the vice president was not using the right words, he may have been saying the right thing because this guy is a federal officer. this precedent that's been around since 1890 probably protects him, what, unless somebody on the federal end decides to bring criminal charges? Well, so the short answer to that is that it's unclear because about six months ago, last June, the Supreme Court handed down another case called Martin v. United States, where they said that Neagle is, it's certainly weaker than I used to think it was. You know, they weakened Neagle somewhat. What I get out of Martin is that protections for federal law enforcement officers against state prosecutions are not absolute.

So they are not what J.D. Vant said they are, even though there is still some protection there. All right. So the Supreme Court within the last year is telegraphing something different than it was in 1890 and in the years that followed. Is there a chance in your mind that this case ends up in some fashion before the Supreme Court? I think that if the state of Minnesota prosecutes, and that's a big if here, because first of all, we don't know if they're going to be able to conduct a thorough investigation given the federal sabotage. And second of all, you know, we don't know what the results of that investigation would be. You know, maybe they determine that they can't bring a successful prosecution here. You know, even if Jonathan Ross is guilty, the prosecutors still have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And so they may determine that they just don't. have enough evidence that it's worth going to a jury. But if they bring a prosecution, I think that the state of the law governing when a state can bring a prosecution against a federal officer is very unclear right now. And this, you know, especially given how high profile this case is, this is the sort of case that I could easily see winding up in front of the Supreme Court. If Minnesota

state prosecutors are able to bring charges against this man, what does that mean for the way that behaves in the streets next month, six months from now, a year from now? So the short answer, I think it depends a lot on what the courts say. What the Supreme Court said recently in Martin, though, is they essentially said that, well, we only want Neagle to apply when we know that this officer is actually carrying out federal duties. Federal officers may sometimes defeat state prosecutions against them by demonstrating that their actions, though criminal under state law,

were necessary and proper in the discharge of their federal responsibilities. All that I have to say about that language is, you know, I'm a good enough lawyer. If I was a Minnesota state prosecutor, I could argue that shooting someone when they had their wheels turned against you and they weren't a threat to you is not, you know, necessary and proper the discharge of federal law enforcement and therefore prosecution should be allowed. And if I were Jonathan Ross's attorney, I could argue the opposite. Like, that's really vague language that the Supreme Court handed down in Martin. And so I don't know what the correct answer is to the question of whether or not Ross can be

prosecuted in state court, because the only thing I've got to work with is this extraordinarily vague line from the Supreme Court about, you know, things that are necessary and proper to federal responsibilities. What do you make of the fact is somebody who is a lawyer and who has covered the law for a long time. What do you make of the fact that a lot of Americans are feeling right now that the law does not work, that a woman is dead, that ICE is dragging people off the streets in some cases violently, and the law does not seem to apply to those people? Yeah. No, I mean, they are correct that there is, in fact, selective law enforcement in the Trump administration. You know, Trump had a very different reaction to the January 6 offenders, some of which endangered

federal law enforcement officers a whole lot more than Renee Good did. So, yeah, I mean, there's no question here that the Justice Department is behaving in a political matter, and it's a serious problem. Like, you know, for many, many years, there were very strong norms saying that even though the Justice Department is part of a presidential administration, prosecutorial decisions should be made by civil servants for neutral legal reasons and not for political reasons. And that norm has just completely broken down under this president. Ian Milheiser, he covers the Supreme Court and the law for Vox.

Danielle Hewitt and Ariana Espudo produced today. Amina El-Saudi was our editor. Patrick Boyd and David Tatashore are our engineers, Andrea Lopez-Cruc. Zotto is our fact checker. I'm Nuel King. It's today explained.