A Feminist Analysis of State Violence, Dehumanization, and the “Invasion” Myth
The killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother shot in her car by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, is not a singular tragedy. It is a femicide illuminated by the harsh, intersecting spotlights of patriarchy and white nationalist ideology. Her death exposes a brutal truth: when a state apparatus is consciously remade with the language, imagery, and goals of racial purism, women’s bodies—particularly those perceived as defiant or out of place—become primary targets in a domestic war.
The Person vs. The Propaganda: The Erasure of Renee Good
To understand the violence, one must first see the person the state sought to erase.
· She was a mother of three, who had just dropped her six-year-old son at school before she was killed.
· She was a creator, an English graduate and award-winning poet who “wrote about others” and described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom”.
· She was a community member who, with her wife, had gone to a neighborhood scene of ICE activity to support their neighbors, armed with nothing but whistles.
The administration’s narrative, delivered within hours, performed a familiar, misogynistic alchemy: transforming a living woman into a threatening archetype. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared Good had “weaponized her vehicle” in an act of “domestic terrorism”. President Trump and Vice President Vance labeled the shooting clear self-defense. This instantaneous framing—the hysterical, dangerous woman justifying lethal male control—is a classic tool of patriarchal power. It seeks to kill her twice: first physically, then reputationally, stripping her of humanity to sanctify the violence against her.
The Architecture of Dehumanization: From “Remigration” to Recruitment
Good’s shooting did not occur in a vacuum. It is the logical endpoint of a systematically constructed culture within DHS and ICE that feminist analysis recognizes as built on domination and exclusion.
The Ideological Language:
The administration has fully embraced the white nationalist lexicon. The cornerstone term is “remigration,” a euphemism for mass deportation popularized in Europe by far-right figures and tied to concepts of ethnic cleansing. Trump himself has declared, “America was invaded and occupied. I am reversing the Invasion. It’s called Remigration”. This rhetoric of “invasion” is the core conspiracy theory of the “great replacement,” which casts immigrants—particularly non-white ones—as a hostile, destructive force.
The Visual Recruitment Campaign:
ICE’s “wartime recruitment” drive, funded by a massive budget increase, weaponizes this ideology. Its ads are a gallery of white supremacist and patriarchal imagery:
· Militarized White Masculinity: Posters feature white father-son duos in tactical gear with rifles, or Uncle Sam figures demanding viewers “DEFEND THE HOMELAND” and remove “foreign invaders”.
· Cultural Nostalgia: It co-opts manifest destiny art and Norman Rockwell-style paintings, captioning them with slogans like “A Heritage to Be Proud Of,” explicitly tying immigration enforcement to the defense of a white, traditionalist America.
· Memeified Brutality: The agency posts videos of detainments set to pop songs by artists like Olivia Rodrigo, who condemned the use as “hateful,” turning real human suffering into trollish content to recruit a younger demographic.
This campaign, as noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is designed to “normalize the dehumanization of immigrants” and recruit individuals ideologically aligned with a militant, racialized mission. It signals that the agency sees itself not as a law enforcement body, but as a front-line military force protecting a racial and cultural homeland.
The Pattern of Violence: When “Protection” Means Predation
This institutional culture yields predictable violence. Renee Good is at least the fourth person fatally shot by federal immigration officers in a five-month period. The Marshall Project and other outlets document a pattern:
· Shootings at vehicles, where agents claim self-defense against “weaponized” cars, a claim frequently disputed by video evidence.
· The pointing of guns at pregnant women, activists, and bystanders.
· A documented history of racist and abusive cultures within border agencies.
This is the environment fostered when top advisers like Stephen Miller (a promoter of the racist novel The Camp of the Saints) and officials drawn from anti-immigrant hate groups set policy. It creates a framework where agents are empowered to see themselves as soldiers and civilians as combatants. Within this framework, a woman like Renee Good—a U.S. citizen who posed a question, who was unarmed, who was in her community—becomes collateral damage in a war for racial and cultural purity.
Conclusion: The Feminist Stakes
The fight for accountability for Renee Nicole Good is a quintessentially feminist struggle. It is about rejecting the state’s power to define which women are grievable and which are disposable. It is about recognizing that the systems that seek to control reproduction, borders, and national identity are intimately linked. The white nationalism championed by this administration is fundamentally patriarchal, obsessed with defending a traditional order against perceived corruption.
Renee Good’s wife, Becca, stated they were raising their son to believe “all of us deserve compassion and kindness”. This is the antithesis of the ICE recruitment slogan, “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?”. One vision is built on care and community; the other on camaraderie in exclusion and violence. Renee Good’s killing is a brutal reminder that when the state chooses the latter, women’s lives are always on the line. Demanding justice for her is an act of resistance against the intertwined pathologies of misogyny and white supremacy that now wear a government badge.