President Donald Trump gave a bizarre response to a simple question about what it would mean for the ICE agent who killed a woman in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to be immune from prosecution.
Members of the administration have falsely claimed that ICE agents enjoy “absolute immunity” after Wednesday’s killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen who was shot in the face while trying to drive away from the scene of an ICE protest.
On Sunday, a reporter aboard Air Force One asked Trump, 79, how the administration defined “absolute immunity,” and what it would mean for ICE agents.
“Everyone’s seen it,” Trump replied. “A woman who’s very violent. She’s a, you know, very radical person. Very sad what happened. Her friend was very radical.”
Asked again how he would define absolute immunity, the president offered an even more muddled reply.
“Well, I’m going to let the people define it. But immunity, you know what immunity, what knows means as well as I do,” he said.
Trump seemed to be describing bodycam video that showed Good sitting behind the wheel of her car and calmly telling the ICE agent who would shoot her minutes later, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.”
Immigration agents circled Good’s SUV while Good’s wife, Rebecca, stood outside and filmed them. The agents then ordered Good to get out of her car. She tried to pull away instead, and an agent shot her three times in the head.
The agent yelled an obscenity while the car continued for a few feet before swerving and crashing into parked cars.
Both Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem originally said Good was trying to run over the agents with her car, with Noem accusing the Christian stay-at-home mother of “domestic terrorism.”
After video emerged showing that, in fact, Good’s tires were turned away from the agent, Vice President JD Vance implied the facts were irrelevant because the shooter was “doing his job” and was therefore covered by full federal immunity.
In fact, the Supreme Court has held that the president enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for all “official acts,” but has not extended that same protection to other federal officials.
The Trump administration has nevertheless tried to prevent the state of Minnesota, which has jurisdiction over potential murder cases, from investigating Good’s killing. Over the weekend, thousands of people protested her death at hundreds of anti-ICE rallies in cities across the U.S.
Legal experts immediately pushed back against Vance’s claims about immunity. Constitutional law expert Michael J.Z. Mannheimer from Northern Kentucky University stated that “The idea that a federal agent has absolute immunity for crimes they commit on the job is absolutely ridiculous.”
Former federal prosecutor Timothy Sini confirmed that “Officers are not entitled to absolute immunity as a matter of law,” though he acknowledged that prosecuting the shooter would not be simple.
Former Hennepin County attorney Michael Freeman, who filed criminal charges against Derek Chauvin over George Floyd’s murder, also weighed in. “We have a rogue officer acting in a malicious way that killed a 37-year-old woman in cold blood. He had no reason to fear for his life,” Freeman told CNN’s Laura Coates. “And I believe he will be prosecuted successfully in state court.”
Asked aboard Air Force One whether he believed it was necessary to use deadly force against Good, Trump refused to give a straight answer.
“It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement,” said Trump, who last year pardoned more than 1,500 defendants who attacked police officers during the deadly Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Trump continued: “The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement. You saw that they were harassing them, were following for days and for hours. Uh, and I think frankly they’re professional agitators.”
Good and her wife had just dropped off their six-year-old son at school when they came across protesters trying to disrupt an ICE raid and decided to stop, according to Good’s ex-husband.
When the reporter tried to ask Trump whether “disrespect” was enough to justify summarily killing a U.S. citizen, the president interrupted her.
“I’d like to find out—and we are going to find out—who’s paying for it,” he said.
The administration has repeatedly claimed that millions of anti-Trump protesters are being paid by shadowy radical groups, but that somehow the FBI has not yet figured out who’s behind the vast conspiracy. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that Good and her wife were “professional agitators” or that they had been harassing ICE for hours before the shooting.
In his comments, Trump repeatedly avoided acknowledging that Good was married to a woman, referring to her wife only as “her friend.”
The ICE agent who shot Good has been identified as Jonathan Ross, 43, an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ross served as a machine gunner in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 before joining the Border Patrol in 2007 and ICE in 2015.
Ross testified last month that he is assigned to fugitive operations seeking to arrest “higher value targets” and is also a team leader with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor, a field intelligence officer, and member of the SWAT team.
Ross was seriously injured in June 2025 when he was dragged the length of a football field in 12 seconds after his arm was caught in a suspect’s vehicle during an arrest attempt. He eventually required dozens of stitches and a tourniquet applied by an FBI agent.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he’s seen videos of the incident and called the federal agency’s narrative of the events “b****t,” while Governor Tim Walz warned, “Don’t believe this propaganda machine.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty stated that the officer who shot Good in the head does not have complete legal immunity despite Vance’s declaration. “We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case. It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent,” Moriarty said at a news conference.
President Trump criticized Minnesota officials, calling Governor Walz “an incompetent governor” and “a stupid person,” and justified excluding them from the investigation by claiming they are “crooked officials.”
The killing comes amid an influx of 2,000 federal law enforcement members in the Twin Cities metro area. Federal law enforcement sources tell CBS News the Department of Homeland Security is considering deploying hundreds of additional agents to Minneapolis following the fatal shooting and ensuing protests.
At least 1,000 people marched in south Minneapolis during freezing rain to protest the shooting, gathering at the makeshift memorial where Good was killed. The government is shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from Louisiana, representing a pivot from operations that had been expected to last into February.