Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has led furious Democratic outrage at PunchUp’s revelation that ICE quietly relocated the agent who shot dead unarmed mom Renee Good.
Jonathan Ross, 43, was moved out of Minneapolis after just three days on administrative leave for the fatal Jan. 7 killing of the 37-year-old mother of three and is now back on duty in a fresh posting handling investigations and administrative work, the Daily Beast’s sister investigations Substack exclusively reported Monday.
Senior DHS sources told PunchUp that ICE’s internal review of Ross has been paused indefinitely—effectively held hostage by an FBI probe that whistleblowers and a bipartisan Senate letter allege was killed from the top.
“I think it is so brazen. It’s intentional,” Ocasio-Cortez, the 36-year-old Bronx congresswoman, told PunchUp and Migrant Insider. “You have an ICE agent who killed a woman, you know, in cold blood. But the fact that the agency has reinstated him is a direct message from the administration about the impunity they feel.”
She warned that every U.S citizen Ross encounters going forward will be “in just as great danger as she was in,” and renewed her demand that Democrats refuse to give ICE or U.S. Customs and Border Protection “a dime.”
Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride branded the move “absolutely outrageous,” telling the outlets: “It is clear this administration has learned nothing from the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and they seem to be asking for it to happen again. There should be accountability, not unleashing this person back on American citizens in our communities.”
Pretti, 37, a VA ICU nurse, was thrown to the ground and shot to death by Border Patrol agents on Jan. 24 as he stepped in to help a woman who had been shoved by them—roughly a mile from where Good was shot and killed dead 17 days earlier.
The pair who killed him, Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez, remain on administrative leave with full pay and benefits, their names still officially withheld by DHS, with no federal charges, no state charges, and a DOJ civil rights probe that NPR reports has gone nowhere.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the Minneapolis district where Good lived, told Migrant Insider and PunchUp it was “really, really heartbreaking that we cannot get accountability” for “the murder of Renee Good.”
Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez said Ross being back on the streets “should concern everyone,” asking pointedly: “What state will he go to?” Ross is originally from the Minneapolis area; his current posting has not been disclosed.
California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove told the two independent Substack outlets that Ross’ reinstatement was “beyond the pale,” noting that he “has not shown any remorse” and “has not acknowledged that what he did was illegal, criminal, wrong.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, of Long Beach, called Ross’ return to duty “horrific” and pointed to “a consistent pattern that you’re seeing across DHS.”
Sen. John Hickenlooper, of Colorado, found the agent’s reinstatement “deeply disconcerting,” while veteran House Homeland Security Democrat Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi said: “I’m not comfortable with what I saw on the video. I’m not comfortable with what was said after the immediate killing.”
A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast, “We are not going to expose the name of this officer. He acted according to his training an [sic] in a manner that ensured his own safety and that of his fellow officers and bystanders.”
Outgoing ICE Director Todd Lyons resigned last month and is set to leave his post on May 31.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
