An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed 37-year-old, on Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, which is the ninth ICE-involved shooting since September, according to The New York Times.

In the aftermath of the shooting, as videos from multiple angles circulated on the internet, the party line among MAGA-verse began to materialize: The mother was actually to blame. Not only that, but she was a “domestic terrorist,” according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agent’s use of force was meant to “protect himself and the people around him.”

Contrary to the videos you can see with your own eyes, Noem claimed that Good “attempted to run [ICE agents] over and rammed them with her vehicle,” a claim later repeated by President Donald Trump.

What the video did show, as HuffPost previously reported, was that Good — a U.S. citizen who was reportedley acting as a legal observer, as city leaders told CBS — was in her car perpendicular to a line of ICE vehicles and was repeatedly ordered by agents to “get out of the fucking car” and to “move, move, move” as other agents were approaching and pulling on the handle of her door and reaching into her open window.

From there, Good attempted to drive away, reversing and turning the front wheels to the right, away from the agents. That’s when one agent fired a shot from the left of the vehicle before firing two more as it pulled away.

Emily Heller, an eyewitness on the scene, previously told HuffPost that Good appeared “obviously scared” and was seemingly attempting to leave the scene, casting doubt on the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that the shooting was a matter of self-defense, stating that the agent “put himself in front of her.”

Yet, there are still voices arguing that the shooting was justified — and even going as far as to argue that the victim’s failure to “obey” is enough to warrant this behavior from law enforcement.

Let’s Just Say It Now: They Don’t Get To Kill You

Many MAGA members echoed language we’ve seen in previous shootings of unarmed individuals involving law enforcement: If only the untrained, unarmed civilian at gunpoint did XYZ quicker or more perfectly followed the numerous, often-contradicting orders they were given (again: at gunpoint), they wouldn’t be dead.

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) was one of those who pushed this reasoning on Newsmax’s “Carl Higbie Frontline” on Wednesday. “The bottom line is this: When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them, and you get to keep your life,” Hunt said during the segment.

Over on X, a generally good place to get a read on the pulse of the right, there was an array of tweets arguing that it was Good’s inability to efficiently “follow orders” that led to her death. People argued that being mortally afraid of encountering law enforcement is actually normal and acceptable.

By the logic on display from the formerly “don’t tread on me” crowd, anything short of a very specific and expeditious performance of groveling submission is as good as a death warrant. And somehow, law enforcement officers, cast as something of a spooked horse in many of these arguments, cannot possibly be expected to show a higher standard of judgment, threat assessment or emotional regulation, despite being civil servants paid by American tax dollars.

And that’s quite the take. But it’s not how our country works either. We do have some standards of law and a whole Constitution here that’s meant to protect us from extrajudicial state killings (or at least we are supposed to).

The explicit, publicly available policies of the Department of Homeland Security for use of force and deadly force and the 1989 and 1985 Supreme Court cases Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner, support that reality — along with the locally relevant Minnesota State Statute 609.066.

According to the DHS policies, officers who use deadly force are required to make the case that someone other than the shooting victim was in physical danger and that the shooting was the only “reasonable” response to prevent harm to the law enforcement officer (LEO) or others. This is the same definition of “reasonable” used in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which is meant to protect us from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

“As with any use of force, a LEO’s use of deadly force must be reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him or her at the time force is applied,” the DHS guidelines state. “...A DHS LEO may use deadly force only when the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO or to another person.”

Likewise, the policy states that “Deadly force shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject,” save for situations where they have a reasonable belief the subject “poses a significant threat of death or serious physical harm to the LEO or others.”

And perhaps most glaringly in this situation: “DHS LEOs are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle, vessel, aircraft, or other conveyance unless the use of deadly force against the operator is justified under the standards articulated elsewhere in this policy,” per the policy. “Before using deadly force under these circumstances, the LEO must take into consideration the hazards that may be posed to law enforcement and innocent bystanders by an out-of-control conveyance.”

LEOs aren’t given a blank check to extrajudicially kill people, and don’t have the discretion to decide if you get to “keep your life” for following their orders. The force they use needs to match the threat (real or perceived). The bar may not be as far off the ground as many of us would like, but it’s above that.

When deadly force is used, officers are expected to prove that “no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist and may use only the level of force that a reasonable officer on the scene would use under the same or similar circumstances,” per the U.S. Department of Justice, which also cites the Graham v. Connor decision in their policies.

Yet, from the rising temperature of DHS, its surrogates, and the broader MAGA-verse dislocating their necks to argue this as a justified killing, you’d think the standards for when to use violence read very differently.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, noted in a statement that the shooting, which occurred “less than a mile from George Floyd Square,” contributes to the increase we’ve seen in law enforcement killings each year since George Floyd’s death in May 2020.

“Yet, rather than work to decrease these shootings, this administration has chosen to escalate tensions through a surge of militarized law enforcement presence in [Minneapolis] and other cities across America,” he said.

And it’s hard not to think of the advocates and community members calling for reform for years in the aftermath of several high-profile police killings of unarmed Black men. What is considered “reasonable” in the moment by law enforcement, even under the best circumstances, can be applied too broadly, to the detriment of civilians caught in the crossfire with little recourse or protection.

Further, the decision to bar state law enforcement from investigating Wednesday’s ICE-involved shooting makes the question of accountability and justice — and how Americans might get it in this situation— even murkier.

“As stunning as this shooting is, violence against unarmed civilians was as predictable as it was avoidable. Publicly available video footage and accounts from local elected officials raise grave questions about the federal government’s claim of self-defense,” Hewitt continued. “When the government takes a life, it owes us the truth, quickly and completely — not political spin and posturing. We need immediate transparency and real accountability because no agency is above the Constitution, and no community should be forced to live in fear and chaos disguised as ‘public safety.’”

In light of the mounting concerns about ICE overreach — from disappearing citizens, legal residents and immigrants off the street (and into deadly conditions at detention centers) to the the aggressive recruitment push that has put less-than-experienced agents in the field — this is yet another moment that those sounding the alarm about the risks of increased ICE presence find “devastating” and “predictable.”

“For months, the Trump administration has been deploying reckless, heavily armed agents into our communities and encouraging them to commit horrifying abuses with impunity, and, today, we are seeing the devastating and predictable consequences,” Naureen Shah, the director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“Congress must rein ICE in before what happened in Minneapolis today happens somewhere else tomorrow. That means, at a minimum, opposing a Homeland Security budget that supports the growing lawlessness of this agency,” Shah added.

At this point, it can often feel like bringing a legislation-heavy PowerPoint to a knife fight when you show up with a pile of policies and legal precedents to argue that the Trump administration cannot do something, though the courts often do their part. But, ultimately, there has to also be a part of us, as a country, that holds firm to some things as fundamentally intolerable — and the federal government’s ability to shoot (and just cause violent harm to) citizens, protesters or the people they are seeking to deport should’ve been one of them a long time ago.

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