After ICE officer Jonathan Ross killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin immediately blamed the victim. She said ICE officers were “conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”
Video footage from the scene doesn’t seem to support the government’s description of Good or capture the complexities of the scene, and Ross hasn’t been charged with a crime. But McLaughlin’s “violent rioter” label wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark. Rather, this is a phrase the Trump administration, particularly DHS, has regularly and quite purposefully used to characterize people who show up to oppose its officers and actions.
There’s no doubt that some federal agents have been confronted by violent individuals who may want to hurt them, but the government’s broad, seemingly reflexive use of the phrase has helped push the noxious idea that it’s criminal to publicly gather and express outrage at officials and law enforcement as they carry out Trump’s deportation agenda. In Minneapolis, the government seems determined that we not think of Good as an American who had the right to object to her government’s actions. But to be clear, this stretchy use of the word “riot” didn’t start with the Trump administration.
This is a preview of Jarvis DeBerry's latest column. Read the full column here.
