Editor’s Note: This is a guest commentary. The opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
Content warning: This commentary contains details of violence
On Jan. 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot Renee Good three times. Good was sitting in her car, observing an ICE arrest with her wife. Before the shooting, ICE agent Jonathan Ross circled Good’s car, filming the car and its license plate with his phone. Good’s last words were caught on Ross’ phone: “That’s fine, dude; I’m not mad at you,” Good said. As more ICE agents drew closer and gave contradicting orders, Good drove forward and rightward, away from Ross. One piece of footage shared by The New York Times shows ICE agent Ross firing from the side of the vehicle, leaning towards her. He shot Renee Good three times. After the shooting, he said: “f—ing bitch.”
Witnesses posted their videos of what happened on the internet, and by the end of the day, footage of the murder had been shared innumerable times on social media platforms. Competing narratives emerged almost immediately. Some claimed Good tried running over the ICE agent. President Donald Trump claimed she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem described it as an attempt of an “act of domestic terrorism.” Neither of these allegations have been corroborated by now-widespread video evidence. Others, including me, maintain it was a murder.
How could the president of the United States say that anyone ran over anyone when we have all seen for ourselves that it simply did not happen? Trump lying is no surprise, but this lie, built on hardly any plausible deniability, seems particularly blatant to me. It only made sense when I removed myself and people like myself (i.e., not oligarchs) from the equation. The Trump administration is simply not concerned with public perception; by cementing itself as an undemocratic force, it has no reason to adhere to anyone.
Instead of popular support, the U.S. government is sustained by the companies it employs to maintain its power. Palantir Technologies is a company that can track me, you and everyone via artificial intelligence. The technology determines patterns in large amounts of harvested personal data, and is, at this point, an integral part of how ICE finds and deports undocumented immigrants. In April 2025, ICE bought ImmigrationOS from Palantir for $30 million, software specifically to be used for tracking and deporting undocumented immigrants. This software could be used to find anyone. On Jan. 4, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, in response to a tweet that read “Commies […] should be blown up along with their gravesites,” posted “What did you think founding Palantir was supposed to be about?” Palantir software, along with the industrial might of our military and the militarization of ICE, renders democracy impossible to actually implement: there is no way for the people to actually hold their leaders accountable when up against technologies like these.
Good was not tracked down by ICE using Palantir, but this is an example of ICE using its force to kill a political dissenter and the administration using propaganda to smooth it all over. With Palantir, this entire situation can be repeated again, again and again, with any target the government chooses.
All anti-fascists in the U.S. need to realize the full scale of what we are up against. The U.S. is already undemocratic.
