The FBI is investigating whether Renee Nicole Good, the queer 37-year-old mother who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent last week in Minneapolis, had connections to activist groups opposing the Trump administration’s brutal immigration enforcement campaign.

According to the New York Times, sources familiar with the probe say that the Justice Department intends to cast a wide net, investigating activists involved in the January 7 protest that preceded Good’s death, who they believe instigated the shooting.

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DOJ civil rights leaders resign in protest of potential cover-up of ICE shooting of Renee Good

They also said that it seems increasingly unlikely that Jonathan Ross, the 43-year-old ICE agent who fired three shots into Good’s SUV, killing her, will face criminal charges, according to the Times.

As the Times notes, the move is in keeping with the Trump administration’s efforts to blame Good for her own death, as well as its broader efforts in recent months to falsely paint progressive activism and constitutionally protected protest as “domestic terrorism.”

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President Donald Trump and top members of his administration have been relentless in their characterization of Good as a “domestic terrorist.” In the immediate aftermath of her death, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Good “weaponize[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over” — a characterization disputed by witnesses and local law enforcement, and contradicted by multiple videos of the incident. Noem doubled down on her claims during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, describing Good’s alleged “attack” on Ross as “an act of domestic terrorism.”

During a January 8 White House press briefing, Vice President JD Vance claimed, citing no evidence, that Good was part of a “broader leftwing network” that used “domestic terror techniques.”

“This is classic terrorism,” Vance said, according to The Guardian.

And after posting, falsely, on Truth Social that Good “viciously ran over” Ross, Trump told a group of reporters on Air Force One this weekend that Good and her wife were “professional agitators” — again, citing no evidence. “We are going to find out who’s paying for it,” Trump added.

The Trump administration’s campaign against progressive organizations and activists ramped up in the immediate aftermath of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist activist Charlie Kirk’s September 10 slaying. The president explicitly blamed “the radical left” for Kirk’s death even before a suspect was apprehended, while Vance blamed “left-wing political radicalization.” Trump and his allies signaled their intention to use the killing as a pretext to crack down on organizations that fund progressive causes.

As the Times notes, last month Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo expanding the definition of domestic terrorism to include impeding and even doxxing law enforcement officers. Opposition to immigration enforcement, anticapitalism, and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion and morality” were among the “political and social agendas” Bondi’s memo claimed domestic terrorists use violence to advance, according to the Times.

Thomas E. Brzozowski, the former counsel for domestic terrorism in the Justice Department’s national security division, suggested to the Times that in characterizing Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism” before the completion of a “deliberate and considered” investigation, Trump administration officials are simply turning the term into a “political cudgel to bash one’s enemies.”

At the same time, he noted that Bondi’s memo “complicates things because it builds in a set of assumptions about what domestic terrorism is.”

“If you’re an investigator in the field, you can’t simply run away from this new definition [of domestic terrorism],” Brzozowsk explained. “You have to deal with it.”

The Times’ reporting on the investigation comes as four senior officials in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have resigned in protest of the administration’s decision not to investigate whether Ross violated Good’s rights. Last week, the FBI said it would take full control of the investigation into the shooting, excluding state law enforcement from access to case materials, evidence, and witnesses. Critics of the administration argued that keeping blue-state law enforcement out of the investigation and confining it to an agency loyal to the president is likely to bias the investigation.

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