ICE Quietly Moves Agent Who Killed Renee Good: Report

The ICE officer who killed Renee Good in a shooting that spurred nationwide protests earlier this year was back at work shortly after the shooting, and federal investigations into the incident have stalled, according to a . Separately, ICE agents in at least one field office were reminded to avoid standing in front of cars, one agent present at the meeting told HuffPost; they were also advised to let people drive away if they seemed intent on doing so.

When reached for comment about the PunchUp story about Ross, a DHS media account said in an emailed statement, without using the agent’s name: “He acted according to his training an [sic] in a manner that ensured his own safety and that of his fellow officers and bystanders.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Neither DHS nor DOJ denied Latchem’s reporting to PunchUp, instead referring to ongoing investigations.

Ross’ killing of Good — followed days later by another fatal shooting by DHS agents, of Pretti — set off nationwide protests. The deaths, and the backlash to them, ultimately contributed to the drawdown of federal forces from Minneapolis, Donald Trump’s decision to yank Border Patrol mascot Greg Bovino from the area, and the ouster of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The day after Pretti was fatally shot, Bovino said the agents involved had not been placed on administrative leave and instead had been allowed to keep working. Three days later, DHS reversed course, saying that the two agents who shot at Pretti had, in fact, been placed on leave.

In recent months, the federal government has consistently blocked transparency into shooting investigations, exaggerated or lied about agents’ injuries, and falsely smeared the victims of its agents’ shootings as “domestic terrorists” and criminals.

After an immigration agent shot Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis in January, the Trump administration was quick to claim that agents had been “ambushed” and that Sosa-Celis and others had “attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.” That was a lie, video showed, and federal prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges in the case, citing “newly discovered evidence in this matter [that was] materially inconsistent with the allegations.”

“Lying under oath is a serious federal offense,” then-ICE leader Todd Lyons said, referring to a probe of the ICE officers who had made false claims about the shooting.

In Chicago, Charles Exum, a Border Patrol agent who shot Marimar Martinez multiple times in October last year, “was back at work within, I think, three days of the incident in our case,” Christopher Parente, Martinez’s attorney, told HuffPost. (In November, Exum said he had never been suspended by Border Patrol.) Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in February that Exum had been placed on administrative leave.

Exum called Martinez a “bitch” before shooting her five times, video showed, and drove his car across the country after the shooting despite the vehicle being potential evidence in the shooting case.

“We were in the middle of that destruction-of-evidence hearing when they dismissed the case,” Parente told HuffPost. As with other cases, video of the incident — released in the course of a civil suit Martinez filed against the government — showed that Exum had lied about what happened, Parente said.

As with Good and Pretti, the Trump administration referred to Martinez as a “domestic terrorist” after the shooting.