Dr. Bernice A. King has spoken out against the murder conducted by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, calling the agency’s presence in the city an “overwhelming force.”
Yesterday, an immigration officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in her car during a confrontation, the Department of Homeland Security later claiming the agent acted in self-defense. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have denied those claims, Frey saying, “that is bulls**t” in a press conference after the shooting. A video that captured the event shows the officers ordering someone to step out of a Honda Pilot and attempting to open up the driver’s side door. The car reverses, then drives forward before an agent begins shooting into the car.
Good is among at least five people who have been killed by immigration authorities since President Donald Trump issued immigration crackdowns across the United States last year. Just on New Year’s Eve, a 43-year-old man named Keith Porter was killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles. Â
King, who is the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, wrote in a statement that the murder of Good goes against her father’s nonviolent philosophy.
“Kingian Nonviolence teaches us that every life has dignity and that justice is love correcting everything that stands against love,” she wrote in the statement. “This callous taking of a life under the banner of ‘law and order’ stands against love.”
Not only did King call out the shooting as an individual act of violence, she also related the effect of the increased presence of federal agents in various cities across the U.S., writing that “A system that deploys overwhelming force in our communities erodes trust, deepens fear, and diminishes our shared humanity.”
Her thought continued in another post. Sharing a video from Reuters that depicted Good’s Killing, King wrote another message addressing what she thinks of ICE’s presence in the city.
“What Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Triple Evils of Racism, Militarism and Poverty persist. These evils are interconnected. Militarism is often used to enforce bigotry, racism, and other systemic violence.”
