Media’s 7 Most Brazenly Fake Claims About ICE Car-Ramming

If you’ve only paid attention to the legacy media over the past few days, you probably know more about Renee Good’s poetry than you do about the actions that led to her tragic death last Wednesday. After refusing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ commands to get out of her car, which she had used to impede agents’ access to a neighborhood road, Good was caught on video accelerating her SUV toward one agent with another hanging on her door. The agent in front of her vehicle fatally shot her as the car appeared to hit him.

The corporate press, with help from the Democrats to whom they run for comment, portrayed Good as a victim of spontaneous violence, a “woman [who] drops her kid off at school, not involved in protest activity or anything, [but] seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The more details emerged, the fewer of those claims turned out to be true.

1. Good Was Just Driving ‘Past’ Agents

A narrative quickly formed insisting that Good’s vehicle wasn’t pointed at the ICE agents at all but was directed away from them.

Someone at Axios Twin Cities approved a headline on Wednesday that said “ICE shoots, kills person in Minneapolis in vehicle that drove past agents.” The story’s lede was even worse: it claimed the ICE agent “shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was in a vehicle that drove close to federal agents” (emphasis added).

In similar fashion, The Washington Post ran a headline at the top of its online front page Thursday morning that claimed the agent “was not in the vehicle’s path” when he fired his handgun. After criticism, the Post changed the headline to say the agent “fired at driver as vehicle veered past him,” without a correction notice. (The same article frames Good’s acceleration toward the agent as navigating “in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.”)

But regardless of whether Good intended to hit the officer, it’s obvious from video footage that from the officer’s visual perspective, her car was aimed directly at him. Multiple videos appear to show her vehicle actually hitting him — which would make the Post’s claim that he was “not in the vehicle’s path” something of an impossibility.

2. Agent Was ‘Knocked Backward But Not Hit’

PBS had perhaps the most baffling description, saying the agent “appears to be knocked backward but not hit.”

A local ABC affiliate said there were “several feet of separation between the SUV and the ICE agent” and “No ICE agents appeared to be hit.”

But multiple videos of the event — including one filmed by the agent himself — appear to show the vehicle come into contact with the officer. The agent’s father also confirmed to media that his son had been hit by Good’s vehicle.

3. Good’s Car Was in Reverse

Multiple news outlets used deceptive phrasing to imply that Good was backing away from the officers, rather than accelerating toward them, when she was shot. The Washington Post falsely stated that the agent was “shooting … as the driver reverses and pulls away.” (That bit of reporting came under the headline: “Woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis was a mother of 3 and a poet.”)

The Economist pulled a similar stunt, claiming Good “reversed, and tried to drive away” when she was shot. Video footage clearly shows she was rapidly accelerating toward agents when she was killed.

4. Good Just Happened to Be There After School Drop-Off

People Magazine claimed Good “Had Just Dropped 6-Year-Old Off at School When She Encountered ICE,” as if she had accidentally ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Guardian said she “was driving home with her partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street,” citing an AP interview with Good’s ex-husband. The ex-husband also told the AP she was “no activist,” a claim that was quickly repeated.

But reporting by the New York Post on Thursday indicated Good was part of an activist group dubbed “ICE Watch,” which the Post described as “dedicated to disrupting ICE raids” in Minneapolis. A mother from the school where Good’s child attends told the Post that Good “was trained against these ICE agents — what to do, what not to do, it’s a very thorough training.”

Another video showed Good’s vehicle blocking the street minutes before the altercation, further disproving the claim that she did not intend to obstruct ICE operations.

5. Good Simply ‘Panicked’

It’s impossible to read minds, but that didn’t stop members of the media from speculating that Good lurched her vehicle forward in a state of innocent panic.

“She will not get the chance to tell her story. Whatever it was: I was trying to turn the car, I was panicked. I’m not a professional. If somebody outside my vehicle had a gun, I would be freaking out,” panelist Noel King said Friday on CNN This Morning.

Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told Morning Joe on Friday that Good “was approached by several ICE officers, agents armed in a very menacing, aggressive fashion. Looks like she panicked and tried to veer off to the right, flee the situation, and she was shot lethally three times in the course of trying to flee.”

But video from the agent’s phone calls that narrative into doubt. It shows Good talking indignantly to the agent as he walks around her car, and then appears to show her looking directly at the agent before hitting the gas, contradicting the narrative that she didn’t know what she was doing.

6. The Agent Shot Through the Driver Side Window

Initial eyewitness reports claimed Good had been shot three times through the driver’s side window, which undermined the claim that the agent was in front of her car. But even after photos were released showing a bullet — presumably the first one — struck the front windshield, The Washington Post still claimed the agent was “shooting toward the driver’s-side window.”

7. Good Was ‘Unarmed’

Vehicles have been used as weapons countless times, including in deadly terror attacks and in more than 100 attacks on ICE agents this year. But that didn’t stop the San Francisco Chronicle from describing Good as an “unarmed Minnesota motorist.”

Former Obama speechwriter and “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau repeated the same falsehood, calling Good an “unarmed citizen.”

Elle Purnell is the assignment editor at The Federalist. She has appeared on Fox Business and Newsmax, and her work has been featured by RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.