Nationwide protests have broken out after an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, last week, alleging she tried to ram him with her car during a protest.
New information shows the ICE agent reportedly lied to his neighbors about what he does for work.
The agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, 43, was caught in a bystander’s video standing by Good’s car wearing a mask, and firing multiple close-range shots into her vehicle.
Highlights
- ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Nicole Good and lied to neighbors, claiming he was a botanist during a 2020 garage party.
- Video shows Good's tires turned away from Ross, contradicting claims she tried to ram him during the protest.
- Neighbors were shocked to learn Ross was a federal agent; he kept to himself and his family was described as polite.
Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, lied to neighbors about his profession
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A PEOPLE Magazine article revealed he told neighbors that he was a botanist. The conversation took place in 2020 during a garage party amid the COVID pandemic.
“He said he worked with plants, as a botanist, so he lied about what he did,” a neighbor told the magazine. Ross has worked for ICE since 2015, when he joined the agency as a deportation officer.
Before that, he was deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005, where he served as a machine gunner on a gun truck as part of a combat patrol team. He then joined Border Patrol in 2007 and worked there as a field intelligence agent until he joined ICE.
Image credits: Facebook
Ross’ neighbor in the Minneapolis suburb of Chaska, Minn., told PEOPLE that she was shocked to hear the news of the shooting. She described Ross as someone who kept to himself in the neighborhood, adding that none of the neighbors had discovered he was a federal agent.
“[He said he] enjoyed border control... but loved plants,” she said about Ross. “So when I found out he was the one on the news, I said, ‘What! That’s so crazy!’ I had no idea he was an ICE agent.”
The woman described how in the aftermath of the shooting, she saw agents moving Ross’ belongings out of his house and that there had been a patrol car monitoring the address.
The Daily Beast noted that satellite images show Ross’s house displaying a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag in the yard.
Image credits: Facebook
“It really creeps me out that those are my neighbors — that that’s the kind of people I live next to. It’s really upsetting,” the neighbor said. “I just assumed all the ICE agents were like, from Texas and Arizona and Florida.”
She told the magazine of her unease with the situation, adding, “I think it impacted a lot of our neighbors that way. People really haven’t been talking about it because you just want to maintain some peace on the road — you don’t want to start fights. But it’s just really hard to process. And then every day, you hear about more people getting detained.”
In a separate interview, another neighbor told The Daily Mail that Ross’ wife was “polite, very nice, very outgoing, while he’s [Ross] very reserved,” adding that he and his wife “have a couple of kids.”
Neighbors were under the impression that Ross was a botanist
Image credits: House and Whips/Facebook
The Daily Mail also identified his wife 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.
The Trump administration has stood by and defended Ross, even saying he has full federal immunity. The White House has claimed Good had been “stalking and impeding” ICE’s “lawful operations” throughout the day before the shooting.
Her neighbors have refuted this allegation, although one person who knew her said she was part of a network aimed at disrupting ICE activity across Minneapolis.
Image credits: ODU English Department
Ross, Trump, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have all alleged that Good was trying to run over the agents with her car. But the bodycam video later released appears to show that Good’s tires were turned away from the agents.
It also shows Good smiling at Ross, saying, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” Ross tells Good to stop as she attempts to drive away. But as she pulls away, he fires multiple shots through the side window at Good and calls her a “f*****g b***h.”
Vice President J.D. Vance then implied the facts were irrelevant because the shooter was “doing his job.”
Vance also accused the news media of “lying about the attack,” despite the video footage disputing claims made by the Trump administration. CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller also noted that Ross had defied training given to regular police never to stand directly in front of a car when someone was in the driver’s seat.