Can the ICE shooter be prosecuted?

The Twin Cities, and much of the nation, are still reeling from ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting and killing Renee Good last week. The local resistance to the federal immigration forces deployed in and around Minneapolis has grown , and the Trump administration’s rhetoric against Good and the protesters around Minneapolis has heated up. On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the US military to the cities to crush the activists. Can the ICE shooter be prosecuted? The answer could hinge on a Supreme Court ruling from 1890 - and another from 2025. Meanwhile, a question still hangs over the crisis: Will Ross face any legal accountability for killing Good? Vice President JD Vance insists that Ross has “absolute immunity” for his actions, and the Justice Department is declining to investigate him. But others wonder if the state of Minnesota can prosecute Ross for the killing. The short answer, at the moment, is maybe. Today, Explained cohost Noel King spoke with Vox’s senior legal correspondent Ian Millhiser about the state of the competing federal and state investigations into Good’s death, what the Supreme Court has said about this issue, and whether the Trump administration’s immunity claims about ICE officers have any merit. There’s much more in the full podcast. So listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts , Pandora , and Spotify . A woman in Minnesota is dead and there is video of her killing at the hands of an ICE agent . The first response from many thinking Americans was: There will be a legal way of dealing with what happened here. There will be accountability. Why is that our response? The whole point of legal accountability is to deter people from doing bad things. This isn’t the only reason I don’t break into my neighbor’s home, but one reason I don’t break into my neighbor’s home is I know that if I do, I will be arrested. Key takeaways The federal government has shown little interest in prosecuting the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, but Minnesota may try to prosecute him on state charges. The Justice Department is not cooperating or sharing information with Minnesota state investigators, which will make a state prosecution more difficult. The Supreme Court has a very old precedent stating that federal law enforcement officers are immune from prosecution for acts taken while carrying out their duties, but in June 2025, the Court issued another ruling saying that that immunity is not absolute if the actions in question were not “necessary and proper” for their responsibilities. This is a question that the Supreme Court has been wrestling with for quite some time, is when do we want law enforcement officers to feel like if they behave badly, they will fear legal consequences? All right, let’s talk about the investigation in Minneapolis at this point. What do we know? We know it’s pretty splintered. Normally the way something like this would work...

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