In Response to the Renee Good killing, Dems Propose ICE Reforms That Would Have Done Nothing to Prevent the Renee Good Killing

Good’s killer was a 10-year ICE veteran, himself a trainer, and recorded the killing. What good would more training and more cameras have done?

By Adam Johnson, The Real News Network

In response to the January 7 ICE murder of Renee Good and the broader, untenable ICE terror campaign Trump unleashed on Minneapolis—and other major US cities—congressional Democrats are under increasing grassroots pressure to do something, anything, to fight back against the lawlessness and brazen violence of Trump’s deportation machine.

Democratic leadership, who yesterday refused to fund an upcoming DHS bill because it did not “do enough to rein in ICE,”  have spent the past few weeks establishing their line in the sand. And what they appear to have settled on is a typical suite of pseudo-reforms, cosmetic PR and HR tweaks, body-worn cameras, and more money for “training,” all of which will do nothing to meaningfully alter the calculus for the Trump White House or ICE. Democrats are running through the motions of opposition in exchange for “guardrails” that will do little to nothing to address the central issues, while refusing to meaningfully tackle the source of ICE’s power—namely, its immunity from prosecution and obscene funding levels. Put another way: Democrats are responding to the killing of Renee Good by pushing reforms that would have done nothing to prevent the killing of Renee Good, and thus will do nothing to prevent future killings of other Renee Goods.

Democrats are running through the motions of opposition in exchange for “guardrails” that will do little to nothing to address the central issues, while refusing to meaningfully tackle the source of ICE’s power—namely, its immunity from prosecution and obscene funding levels.

The exact prescriptions offered by Democrats are difficult to pin down. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in particular, has remained vague about what his demands are. But according to HuffPost, the primary “constraint” Democrats are insisting upon is $20 million to DHS “that must be used to purchase and operate body-worn cameras for ICE and CBP officers, a directive for DHS to provide de-escalation training for ICE and CBP agents, as well as training reminding officers of Americans’ right to record any interactions they have with them.” The Washington Post, in its analysis, echoed these demands, reporting that Democrats’ language would “require DHS to use $20 million for body cameras for ICE agents, and include $20 million for inspections and oversight for ICE detention facilities.”

Let us recap the proposed reforms and how they would have had zero impact on the killing of Renee Good, or any current or future ICE abuse of power.

More Training: The idea that police and federal law enforcement abuse is due to a failure of sufficient “training” is a common liberal canard that has zero empirical basis. It’s a popular pseudo-reform because, as Alec Karakatsanis detailed in his book Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, it pumps millions more dollars into law enforcement and adds even more overtime pay without reducing or curtailing the power of the punishment bureaucracy. It’s why police unions welcome more training: It fundamentally misdiagnoses the issue while handing even more money to police and federal agents.

Indeed, Good’s killer, Jonathan Ross, was himself an ICE trainer who had 10 years at ICE and had been thoroughly trained by both Border Patrol and the US military. Some high-profile Democrats, like Sen. Cory Booker, have pointed to ICE’s rock-bottom recruiting standards as the culprit. This is a perfectly fine thing to note, but a lack of “training” is not why ICE is lawless and violent. They are lawless and violent by design, for not only structural reasons that transcend who’s in the White House, but also because the current president and head of DHS routinely signal cruelty and brutality will be both rewarded and indemnified. What type of “training” would alter this calculus? What is the point of “more training” when the training they do receive gives them broad permission to shoot and kill people so long as they deem the target a ‘threat’? A 2014 independent review of use of deadly force cases of Border Patrol agents found it was common practice for agents to step in front of cars to justify shooting and killing suspects, a practice so widespread the report authors recommended training agents “to get out of the way [of cars]… as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in the path of such vehicles.” How would this practice be “trained” out of existence when it’s a cheap and easy way to give agents carte blanche to kill at will?

Body-Worn Cameras: A tried and true favorite of pseudo-reforms, demanding more bodycams as a result of Renee Good’s killing is an especially bizarre response, as her killer was shooting her with one hand and recording the incident with his phone in the other. Indeed, the Trump DHS advocates its agents record themselves and others as part of their nazi-style propaganda effort. DHS, like local police, would invariably control the recordings and be able to turn off their cameras whenever they want with no way of enforcing compliance. Bodycams, as Alec Karakatsanis also notes, are favored by police unions because they double as surveillance tools that can selectively be used to exonerate or obscure in service of the police’s preferred narrative. Worse than useless, more money for bodycams will hand even more narrative and policing power to ICE.

Oversight of ICE Detention Facilities: The devil is very much in the details on this reform, but more detention facility oversight that isn’t paired with any accountability or enforcement mechanism is just another form of witness politics. Democrats can look and cry but refuse to defund the system that is causing all the abuse and killing. As Popular Info reported Wednesday, 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025—“…the largest [number] in more than two decades and tied for the highest number of deaths among ICE’s detainee population ever.” Only three weeks into 2025, at least six people have died in ICE custody, a pace that would outstrip 2025. It’s unclear what is achieved by creating more avenues for liberals in Congress to oversee what we already know is happening, but at least this reform, unlike pumping more money into ICE with training and bodycams, doesn’t appear to cause active harm.

What’s conspicuously missing from Democrats’ demands:

Justice for Renee Good—or any of the dozens of others killed by ICE or in ICE custody: There are zero public demands from establishment Democrats that Trump’s (cartoonishly corrupt) Department of Justice arrest and charge Good’s killer. DHS leadership and the White House have not only rushed to defend Good’s killer Jonathan Ross, they’ve lied about Good attempting to murder him, called her a terrorist, and instructed the DOJ to investigate her wife for ties to “extremists.” Democratic leadership has made zero demands for any movement towards justice for Good in their budget negotiations over DHS funding. They are happy to evoke her death for empty social media posturing, but have dropped any reference to what is to happen to her killer. Without real, material accountability for ICE abusers, whether they be Good’s killer or the killers of Villegas González or Geraldo Lunas Campos or any of the dozens of people that have died while in ICE custody, gives a permission structure for future abuses. Without accountability for past abuses and killing any reform will, by definition, be cosmetic and pointless.

Any Budget Cuts to ICE’s Overall Funding: ICE’s budget has more than tripled in the past year, from roughly $10 billion in 2024 to almost $30 billion in 2025. As Lindsay Koshgarian and Sarah Lazare detailed at In These Times, if ICE was a national military it would be the 13th biggest in the world, larger than the militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain. Last year, the federal government received, via Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a staggering $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement through September 2029. On an annual basis, Koshgarian and Lazare note, “this adds about $42.5 billion per year for immigration enforcement.”

Democrats cannot seriously seek to “rein in ICE” without meaningfully slashing its source of power and muscle: its massive budget. Forget “abolishing ICE”—even a call to return ICE to its funding levels 12 months ago would slash its budget by 65%+. Are Democrats demanding this? Are they demanding any meaningful funding cuts at all? They are not. Their budget proposal does, according to the Washington Post, seek to “reduce funding for enforcement and removal operations by $115 million.” But this money is simply being allocated to other sectors of ICE. Overall, Democratic leaders are not seeking to dent ICE’s obscene budget one cent.

To be clear, progressive congressional Democrats are making more substantive demands. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has advocated meaningfully slashing ICE’s funding, and reiterated her support for abolishing the agency altogether. Others, such as Reps. Adriano Espaillat, Shri Thanedar, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley have made similar demands, but their positions are not that of party leadership. Rep. Delia Ramirez is introducing the Melt ICE Act, which “would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from using funds to detain or monitor immigrants, effectively limiting DHS’s (including ICE and CBP) authority to conduct immigration enforcement,” according to a statement from her office.

On cue, the web of billionaire-funded centrist think tanks have proactively smeared calls for “abolishing ICE” as unserious electoral poison, despite the fact that a plurality of voters now support doing so. Nevertheless, within hours of Good’s shocking murder, the consensus that Democrats should seek modest and cosmetic reform, lest they appear too weak or “woke” on immigration, became Washington consensus. Likewise, despite using the right cool-sounding swear words, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have advised those under siege in Minneapolis to effectively roll over and “avoid confrontation.” So it’s tepid, pointless, and sometimes actively harmful reformist pantomime we get. In stark contrast, activists, immigration groups, and labor unions in Minnesota are planning a shutdown on January 23 to create pressure on corporations, local electeds, and the federal government to stand up to ICE. Needless to say, it’s a bold and courageous action that has, despite being endorsed by the Minnesota AFL-CIO and over a dozen major unions, not garnered public support from Frey, Waltz, or any major national Democratic figures.

The primary power of Democrats in Congress is the power of the purse. While not in the majority, a disciplined party has the votes to gum up DHS funding until it gets meaningful concessions, especially if Democratic leadership would backed efforts by labor to shut down business as usual in Minnesota instead of simply ignoring them. But, once again, Democratic leadership isn’t interested in exercising real power. They’re interested in performance and handwringing and PR. They are interested in looking like they care, and like they are pushing back without the actual political risk or cost of actually taking on the Trump regime in any coordinated or substantive way.