The ICE agent who fired three shots into a vehicle in Minneapolis, killing a 37-year-old mother, has been identified.
Jonathan Ross, 43, was the agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, according to reports by multiple outlets. The killing left Good’s son by her late husband an orphan, led to immediate tensions in the city, and caused a political storm over ICE.
Good had just dropped off her six-year-old son at school when she encountered ICE agents, one of whom later shot her point-blank in Minneapolis, her ex-husband told the Associated Press. She left behind three kids, a daughter and a son aged 15 and 12 from her first marriage, and a six-year-old son from her second marriage, which had ended with her second husband’s death.
Ross was seen on video being dragged roughly 100 yards by a driver during an ICE operation in a Minneapolis suburb, in June of last year. Court documents show that the driver, a Guatemalan sex offender, was convicted of assault. The documents also named Ross and said that he had been hospitalized afterwards.
They showed that he had been dragged when the offender, Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala, came to a halt at an impromptu traffic stop in Bloomington, Minnesota. Ross tried to open the car door, then used a device to smash open the window of the car. Munoz-Guatemala took off, dragging Ross for almost 100 yards.
Ross’ identity emerged because both Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance disclosed that the agent who killed Good was involved in the previous incident.
At the White House on Thursday, Vance said of Ross, “that very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 33 stitches in his leg.” Munoz-Guatemala was never charged with attempted murder but with assault on a federal officer with a dangerous or deadly weapon and resulting in bodily injury, Joseph Thomson, the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said at the time.
The first outlet to name the agent as Good’s killer was the Minnesota Star-Tribune. When they did, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin declined to confirm Ross’s identity, and demanded the Star Tribune retract its story.
“This officer is a longtime ICE officer who has been serving his country his entire life,” she wrote, adding that Ross had over a decade of experience as an ICE agent.
“Publicizing [ICE agents] identities puts their lives and the lives of their families at serious risk. The Star Tribune should be absolutely ashamed of itself for its reckless behavior, and they should delete their story immediately.”
The Star-Tribune did not do so, and among those who named Ross were CBS News, during its Evening News, which is anchored by MAGA-coded Tony Dokoupil. CBS News reported that he was part of a specially trained ICE tactical unit.
Public records show that Ross served in the military, financing his home through a Department of Veterans Affairs mortgage, while social media photos show him handling an M249 SAW machine gun while in the uniform worn in the early years of the Iraq war, standing in front of a green-painted Humvee in an area surrounded by palm trees.
His wife was identified by the Daily Mail as the daughter of Filipino parents. Ross’s father told the outlet that she is a U.S. citizen, but did not reveal how long she had been in the country.
He also defended his son’s decision to shoot Good, telling the Mail, “she hit him,” before praising Ross as a “committed, conservative Christian, a tremendous father, a tremendous husband. I couldn’t be more proud of him.”
Satellite images show Ross’s house displaying a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag in the yard.
Footage taken by bystanders showed Good beginning to drive away from the chaotic scene on a snowy Minneapolis street when an agent—Ross—opened fire at her, shooting once through the windshield and twice through the open driver’s window. Her vehicle slammed to a halt shortly after as witnesses erupted in outrage.
Trump administration officials swiftly sought to portray her as a domestic terrorist who was killed for trying to run over federal agents with her car, sparking protests in the state and outrage across the country.
“This was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people. The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace,” Vance said Thursday in an angry rant against coverage of the killing.
Vance accused the news media of “lying about the attack,” despite the incident being captured on camera from multiple angles. That footage disputes much of what Noem claimed occurred, notably that multiple agents were at risk of being run over by Good and that the agent named as Ross was at risk of being killed.
CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller pointed out that Good had defied training given to regular police never to stand directly in front of a car when someone was in the driver’s seat.
