US woman killed by ICE agent called ‘domestic terrorist’: What it means

United States Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has described the actions of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis pistillate killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) serviceman connected Wednesday, arsenic “domestic terrorism”.

Noem said Good refused to obey orders to get retired of her car, “weaponise[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” implicit an officer. Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to thrust away.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a subordinate of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said connected Thursday connected the CNN quality transmission that Noem’s connection is “an maltreatment of the term” “domestic terrorism”.

President Donald Trump’s medication has turned to the operation successful caller months, including successful an October migration enforcement-related shooting.

In September, the medication issued a memo calling connected instrumentality enforcement to prioritise threats including “violent efforts to unopen down migration enforcement”, saying “domestic terrorists” were utilizing unit to beforehand “extreme views successful favour of wide migration and unfastened borders”. Experts said it violates escaped code laws.

Good, a parent of 3 and a poet, lived successful the Minneapolis neighbourhood wherever she was fatally shot. She was a US national and had nary transgression background, The Associated Press quality bureau reported. Good’s ex-husband told AP that she wasn’t an activistic and helium hadn’t known her to enactment successful protests. Good had dropped disconnected her 6-year-old lad astatine schoolhouse and was driving location erstwhile she encountered ICE.

The Trump medication has ramped up Minneapolis migration enforcement successful caller weeks aft quality reports astir allegations of daycare backing fraud involving the section Somali community.

What is ‘domestic terrorism’?

Federal agencies person their ain definitions of “domestic terrorism”.

According to a 2020 memo, the FBI, citing a circumstantial conception of the US Code, defines “domestic terrorism” arsenic acts unsafe to quality beingness that interruption national oregon authorities transgression laws and look intended to intimidate oregon coerce civilians; power authorities argumentation by intimidation oregon coercion; oregon impact the behaviour of a authorities by wide destruction, assassination oregon kidnapping.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uses a akin definition, citing a antithetic statute that defines “domestic terrorism” arsenic unsafe to quality beingness oregon perchance destructive of captious infrastructure oregon cardinal resources.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service wrote successful 2023: “Unlike overseas terrorism, the national authorities does not person a mechanics to formally complaint an idiosyncratic with home coercion which sometimes makes it hard (and occasionally controversial) to formally characterise idiosyncratic arsenic a home terrorist.”

In 2022, erstwhile FBI cause Michael German, past a chap with New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, told PolitiFact that 51 national statutes use to “domestic terrorism”.

“I deliberation determination is and ever has been disorder betwixt rhetoric and the instrumentality successful respect to terrorism,” German told PolitiFact aft the Minneapolis shooting. “There is nary instrumentality that authorises the US authorities to designate immoderate radical oregon idiosyncratic successful the US arsenic a ‘domestic terrorist’.”

The national authorities periodically revises however it describes threats. For example, successful 2025, national officials sometimes utilized the word “nihilistic convulsive extremists” to picture perpetrators who don’t subscribe to 1 ideology but look to beryllium motivated by a tendency to, arsenic 1 adept enactment it, “gamify” real-life violence. Experts told PolitiFact that the word is valid but cautioned against its overuse oregon citing it to obscure different ideological motivations, specified arsenic achromatic supremacy.

The Trump medication has broadened the ‘domestic terrorism’ label

The DHS rhetoric astir Good’s fatal shooting is akin to different migration enforcement-related shooting successful October. During DHS’s months-long migration crackdown successful Chicago called “Operation Midway Blitz”, a Border Patrol cause changeable US national Marimar Martinez 5 times.

A DHS quality merchandise described Martinez arsenic a “domestic terrorist” and accused her of ramming her conveyance into the Border Patrol agent’s car, carrying a semiautomatic limb and having a “history of doxxing national agents”.

A national justice granted a question from prosecutors to disregard national charges against Martinez successful November.

“Ultimately, determination was a determination erstwhile everything was evaluated that determination were superior questions astir the officers’ narratives,” ineligible expert Joey Jackson told CNN.

The government’s usage of the word goes beyond migration and the DHS.

After blimpish activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump issued a September 25 memo ordering the lawyer wide to grow “domestic terrorism” priorities to see “politically motivated violent acts specified arsenic organised doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, demolition of property, threats of violence, and civilian disorder”.

Trump signed an executive order a fewer days earlier designating antifa, a broad, loosely affiliated conjugation of left-wing activists, arsenic a “domestic terrorist” organisation.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi told national prosecutors and instrumentality enforcement agencies to compile a database of groups “engaged successful acts that whitethorn represent home terrorism”.

Legal experts have raised alarms about the memo’s imaginable infringements connected the First Amendment.

“Both the bid and the memo are ungrounded successful information and law,” Faiza Patel, the manager of liberty and nationalist information astatine the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote. “Acting connected them would interruption escaped code rights, perchance threatening immoderate idiosyncratic oregon radical holding immoderate 1 of a wide array of disfavored views with probe and prosecution.”

Experts person besides pointed to the memo’s absorption connected left-wing violence. It does not notation the politically motivated assassination of Minnesota authorities Representative Melissa Hortman, a subordinate of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, months before.

“When a argumentation directive targets 1 ideological household and leaves others to the footnotes, it sheds immoderate pretense of neutrality,” Thomas E Brzozowski, erstwhile Department of Justice counsel for home terrorism, wrote connected December 12.

Experts rise questions astir Noem’s ‘domestic terrorism’ label

Information is inactive surfacing astir what transpired earlier Good was fatally shot. However, frame-by-frame analyses of video footage by The New York Times and The Washington Post recovered Good’s conveyance moved towards an ICE agent, but the cause was capable to determination retired of the mode and occurrence astatine slightest 2 of the 3 shots from his weapon from the broadside of the car arsenic Good veered away.

Brzozowski told PolitiFact that due to the fact that Good was trying to thrust away, to “characterise that arsenic home terrorism, I think, is simply a stretch.”

However, helium said the larger interest is that Noem is utilizing the “domestic terrorism” word absent immoderate existent findings earlier an investigation.

“Essentially wrong hours of the incidental occurring, labelling this enactment arsenic home terrorism, what that does is efficaciously portion home coercion of its significance,” helium said, calling it a “blatantly partisan effort to statement it arsenic home terrorism”.

“Now what is home terrorism? Whatever the DHS caput says it is? She tin characterise thing she wants arsenic home terrorism. She is doing truthful without immoderate facts to spell on.”

Shirin Sinnar, a Stanford University Law School professor, told PolitiFact: “While intentionally ramming a conveyance for a governmental intent could magnitude to coercion successful a antithetic context, the videos of the Minneapolis incidental look to amusement a pistillate attempting to thrust distant from ICE officers, not deed them. Here, the administration’s calling her a home violent is simply an effort to malign a protester and warrant her sidesplitting by an ICE officer.”

German told PolitiFact determination isn’t immoderate nationalist grounds to suggest that Good was “engaging successful behaviour that could person been prosecuted nether the coercion section of the US Code”.

“So a authorities authoritative calling her a home violent isn’t supported successful the instrumentality and is wholly pejorative and prejudicial.”