New documents shed light on Renee Good’s ties to ICE monitoring efforts in Minneapolis

By Casey Tolan, Rob Kuznia, Isabelle Chapman, CNN

(CNN) — The woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis last week served on the board of her son’s school, which linked to documents encouraging parents to monitor ICE and directing them to training.

The documents shed new light on Renee Good’s connection to efforts to monitor and potentially disrupt ICE operations – an association that federal officials have made clear is at the center of their review into the deadly incident that occurred as she partially blocked ICE agents in the street with her SUV.

But four legal experts who reviewed the documents for CNN said they largely describe nonviolent civil disobedience tactics practiced at American protests for generations – far from the sinister depiction of extremism and domestic terrorism portrayed by Trump administration officials like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance.

“There’s nothing in there that suggests attacking ICE agents or engaging in any other form of physical harm or property damage,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William and Mary Law School who wrote a book on protest law. “This is authoritarianism 101 where you blame the dissenters and the activists for causing their own death.”

Three top federal prosecutors in Minneapolis resigned Tuesday over pressure from the Trump administration to focus their probe on the actions of Good and those around her, according to a person briefed on the matter.

One of the documents linked by the school appears to be a message to parents dated December 16 that begins, “Thank you to families who have been on ICE watch, helping to protect their neighbors.”

The note links to a separate training document with guides on getting whistles to alert neighbors to ICE raids and contact information for a school parent offering “noncooperation training.”

“ICE are untrained bullies looking for easy targets. Neighbors showing up have saved lives,” that training document reads.

Another guide linked to in the training document stresses nonviolent responses to ICE agents, while also encouraging a refusal to “comply with demands, requests, and orders.” It suggests “creative tactics,” noting that “Crowds, props, traffic, and noise can make detentions difficult, sometimes ICE vehicles can’t move (‘whoops!’).” It does not specifically suggest blocking operations with a vehicle.

The December 16 note, titled “School Report,” was an item on the school board’s meeting on that date, an agenda shows – a meeting that Good attended as one of three parents on the board of the Southside Family Charter School.

Records don’t indicate that the board voted on the message. It’s unclear whether it was more widely shared with families at Southside, a small charter school with a long history of progressive activism. Neither the school nor other board members who served with Good responded to messages from CNN.

Two sources familiar with the school said the “School Report” message appeared similar to past newsletters shared with parents, but neither was on the email list at the time to confirm if it was sent out.

The “School Report” message was uploaded to the school’s public Google Drive about two weeks into the federal operation ramping up immigration enforcement actions in the Minneapolis area, which federal officials had launched to target the region’s Somali community.

Good was partially blocking a street with her SUV on Wednesday as ICE agents operated in the area. An ICE officer who was filming Good shot her after she started to accelerate her SUV. Videos of the deadly interaction show that Good was turning her vehicle away from the agent as she pulled forward, but it’s unclear whether she made contact with him before he fired.

Federal officials have claimed without providing evidence that Good was engaging in “domestic terrorism” and had been “stalking agents all day long,” while some state and local lawmakers have decried that rhetoric as false and incendiary.

Good’s family members have said that she and her wife had come from dropping off their son earlier that morning at Southside, about a mile and a half from where Good was shot.

Good’s wife, Becca Good, said in a statement last week that the couple had “stopped to support our neighbors,” adding, “We had whistles. They had guns.”

Legal experts who spoke to CNN said it was troubling that federal officials appeared to be focusing on low-level violations by protesters instead of the shooting of Good itself.

Gregory Magarian, a professor and First Amendment expert at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said that the noncooperation tactics described in the guide could potentially violate some laws depending on the context of the situation. But overall, he said, the document endorsed standard nonviolent protest actions that don’t merit an investigation by federal law enforcement.

“If the FBI has an inkling of investigating the protest organizers, it should read that and say, ‘OK, there’s not a fruitful path of inquiry here. Nothing about that raises red flags, nothing about that raises alarms, we should get back to doing our job,’” Magarian said. The idea that the agency would investigate protesters instead of the use of deadly force is “appalling and really dangerous,” he added.

Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, added that attempts to investigate activists and protesters appear to have “the goal of trying to justify the officer’s conduct.”

Good joined the Southside school board in August 2025, a few months after she moved to Minneapolis with her wife and six-year-old son, according to board meeting notes. Her leadership role at the school has not been previously reported.

Southside, an elementary school that was founded in 1972, had 111 students enrolled last year, according to a school board document. It offers programming like student trips to the South to study the history of the Civil Rights Movement and “hands-on experience planting and harvesting” as part of a curriculum on environmental issues.

“The heart of the school’s mission, social justice education, is woven into every subject and grade level,” an annual report read. “By addressing social justice issues at an early age, the school encourages children to see themselves as citizen activists who can change the world and also helps children avoid internalizing the effects of discrimination.”

The documents show that Good was deeply involved with the school community, even as a relatively recent arrival. Good regularly attended board meetings, with records of one meeting noting that “Renee had some questions about the future growth of the school.”

The same school bulletin that encouraged activism to monitor ICE last month also shared how Good and her wife had “brought pots for us to paint” to a school event: “We will sell them at our plant sale in the spring. They look beautiful!”

Rashad Rich, a former physical education teacher at Southside who taught Good’s son in his class, said the couple were familiar faces at the school.

When they dropped off their son, he “would say goodbye several times before they could leave, and then they would drive around the front of the school so they had a window where he could see them,” Rich told CNN. “They’d wave. They were just awesome parents.”

In the wake of Good’s shooting, Rich said, teachers and staff members at the school have had their names and addresses posted on social media.

“They’re getting threats,” he said. “It’s a scary thing right now.”

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