Eugene joins nationwide protests after ICE shooting death of legal observer Renée Nicole Good

Presenter: Protests erupted in Eugene and nationwide after an ICE agent shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis Jan. 7. Speaking at the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza Jan. 8 from Rapid Response Lane County, Latiffe:

Latiffe (Rapid Response Lane County): We stand here today because people are dying at the hands of ICE—in cages, in transit, and in the streets, and we refuse to let their deaths be renamed, minimized, or explained any other way. 

Because that’s always the first move: Rename the violence so the public can swallow it. Call raids operations, call cages facilities, call deportation removal, call death an incident.

And it only works if we’re trained to doubt or ignore what we can plainly see and what our bodies already know and feel. I know you all feel it. You’re here. Reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears? We won’t. We will not look away, and we will not be trained into silence. 

ICE is not just immigration enforcement. It is a growing armed force built on the backs of immigrants. And immigrants are the test case. Our rights are the first denied. The government learns what it can get away with, and once the system learns, it can disappear people without consequence. It doesn’t stop. It expands.

That’s why they’ve also been trying to do something else, which is to desensitize us. From Sandy Hook to Gaza to ICE kidnapping neighbors at dawn, they keep flooding us with violence until we go numb, until we scroll past it, until our hearts learn to shut down as a survival skill. Don’t let them.

Feel it. Feel it in your chest because something is profoundly wrong. These have been the testing grounds for how much we will tolerate, and now it is clear: The system doesn’t stay contained and no one is exempt.

So how do we meet this moment? We have to meet it with courage.

I am a legal observer too, like Renée. On Nov. 5 at 6:33 in the morning, I was the first legal observer after ICE kidnapped nine neighbors in Cottage Grove. It was early, it was cold. I was alone and I was scared. I was shaking both from fear and from anger, really rage.

And I was afraid, but I stayed anyway because somebody had to witness, somebody had to document, somebody had to make it harder for lies to become the official story.

On that day, their attorney arrived well before transport to Tacoma. Even elected officials stepped in. Sen. (Jeff) Merkley and Congresswoman (Val) Hoyle wrote to ICE demanding due process and translation services, and ICE still denied access. They still denied rights. 

Then when more legal observers and protesters arrived and the attention grew, ICE tried to sneak out all of these community members—our neighbors—to later claim that it was too late, too late for their attorney to see them, too late for due process.

It was a lie. And I said so loudly that day to DHS and ICE and in that moment, they treated me like I was the threat. They racially profiled me. They followed me around with a camera and photographed me. And I carried that fear for days afterwards.

But you know what? I still show up. And it’s not because I’m fearless, but because fear doesn’t get to decide what’s right. The truth still needs witnesses and legal observers know that bearing witness matters. 

I also want to speak directly to the white folks who are here right now. Some of you, maybe for the first time in this way, because it’s the first time you’ve watched someone you see as one of your own be killed in broad daylight and then heard it justified as public safety. 

I truly empathize in that grief and I want to name something gently. Black and brown communities have carried this kind of grief for centuries. We have been told again and again and again that our losses are acceptable collateral in the name of public safety.

So if you’re feeling it now, don’t shut it down, don’t turn away. And use this grief as a portal—let it open your heart and move your feet. Stand in solidarity and commit to not abandoning one another.

Today we tell the truth out loud. Today, we mourn real people. We mourn Renée Nicole Good. A 37-year-old mother killed in Minneapolis during an ICE attack. A human being is gone. A child lost a parent, a community lost someone they loved.

We also mourn the people that never made it out of ICE detention—the people who died behind locked doors, the people who died running for their lives. We say their names because we refuse to let the system erase them.

Killed in detention in 2025: Ismael Ayala-Uribe. Oscar Rascon Duarte. Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas. ([06:30] Confirming spelling). Tien Xuan Phan. Isidro Pérez. Johnny Noviello. Jesus Molina-Veya. Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado. Marie Ange Blaze. Nhon Ngoc Nguyen. Brayan Garzón-Rayo. Maksym Chernyak. Serawit Gezahegn Dejene. And Genry Ruiz Guillén.

Killed fleeing ICE in 2025: Josué Castro Rivera. Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez. Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez. Jaime Alanis García. In Latin America, we say Presente when we named the name of the deceased in political violence. (Presente.) They are here with us today.

But because we have courage, we will keep organizing until detentions end, until families are safe, until no one is hunted. If you are scared, that is real. But courage is what you do while the fear is still in your body.

So today, let your heart stay open. Let your eyes stay honest and let your courage be contagious. We are here. We will continue to bear witness. We are grieving, we are organizing, and we are not going anywhere.

Faith: My name is Faith. My pronouns are she/her. I am a trans queer woman who has been fighting this regime since its first day. 

Renée Nicole Good was a queer woman in my community. She had a wife who watched her die, a wife who was there in the car when the ICE death squad murdered her and casually walked away like he had taken out the garbage.

 Renée Nicole Good had a 6-year-old son whose stuffed animals were in the glove compartment of that vehicle that we all saw with blood staining the airbag from where ICE shot her in the face three times when they were in no danger.

Like Latiffe, I also go on rapid response calls. I have been face to face with ICE. I have had them point guns at me. I’ve had them point weapons at me. Every time I do that, I know that I could end up like  Renée. So does Latiffe. We do it anyway.

We do it not because we are not afraid. I am terrified as a trans woman. I am terrified that I will be forcibly detransitioned and put into prison where it is legal for me to be housed with men because this administration has removed the guardrails that prevent that. (Shame!)

And yet I am here and centering the immigrants and the brown folk because  Renée Nicole, Good. She died yesterday, ICE murdered her yesterday, but as Latiffe said, ICE murdered dozens of Black and brown folk this year as part of their concentrated campaign of state-sponsored terrorism and violence.

Many of you are here today and I recognize you. I have seen you out there. I am at the Federal Building daily protesting ICE, demonstrating putting pressure on this administration, and I have seen so many faces here among the crowd. I am so happy and heartened to be in a community with you. I also see new faces.

I am so glad you are here today. I am so glad that you showed courage standing up for what you know is right in this time where so much is wrong.

As this year continues, as 2026 continues, things will get harder. Not easier. The state wants to normalize this violence. They want us desensitized to masked secret police wearing military tactical gear in our streets. They want that to become the norm. They want us to look away whenever they murder someone and debate whether it was meeting the case law standard of use of force.

When we see the video with our own eyes, though we know that doesn’t matter, we know that that man murdered her. We know that ICE murders people every day and we are not going to back down because the state and these goons in the Gestapo that is ICE continue to intimidate, bully, coerce, and threaten us.

This is a call to courage. All of you are likely somewhat scared. It is scary to confront the federal government. Many of you probably protested during BLM or other times. 

Something about this moment is a little bit different because every mechanism of the federal government, all of the three-letter agencies, the most evil imperialist force in the country, in the global history is now mobilizing against us, and that is terrifying.

In these times, we have been conditioned to look towards institutional guardrails, the courts, ballot measures, county and city comment, our politicians writing letters. 

Institutional guardrails are important, but they are falling. Many of them have fallen, many more will fall. The ones that are still there are brittle, rendered brittle by an administration that has repeatedly flouted the law and an administration that on Jan. 6 years ago, tried to topple the legitimate results through an insurrection that this administration sanctioned and sponsored.

There are no guardrails except us. We are the guardrails. We are the guardrails and we are not an institution. We are noninstitutional. The people we are where we find power. For those who know Erica Chenoweth‘s work, a nonbinary scholar, they speak about civil resistance, which is direct, confrontational, noninstitutional action. 

Institutional action is important. We need a little bit of that, but the vast majority of what we need now is noninstitutional. 

And I am here to give you three ways that you can do noninstitutional action on a day-to-day basis in Eugene to directly resist ICE’s power, and prevent these fascist death squad commandos from digging their claws into our community.

The first thing you can do is show up at the federal building. Every day. There are people there for hours, and our presence has made an impact.

In June there were 40 detentions at that building, 40 people that went in for routine check-ins that they had been going to for years and did not come out in free, in free state. They came out in handcuffs. They were kidnapped to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Facility. They had no idea this was coming.

Now, as of December, there were fewer than five at that building. Five too many. We need zero. And if we keep showing up every day, we will show them that it is impossible for them to do these detentions without the community being there to hold it down, show up, bear witness, and make their job so miserable and difficult that they can’t do that anymore.

Please go to EugeneTogetherStrong.org and look at the ICE protest schedule. There are likely people in the crowd who can give you that URL: EugeneTogetherStrong.org. That lists all of the demonstration slots at the building. Pick one and show up to it all the time. Bring a buddy. Bring your courage.

The second thing you can do is canvass. You do not need permission to canvass. You do not need to be part of an organization. Grab your friend, your partner, your neighbor, your family. Get some whistle kits. Print out whistles. Ask people in the crowd to get them. You can buy them online. Hand those out to your neighbors. 

Let them know what ICE looks like, what they do. Let them know their rights. Every time you do this, you insulate a community against ICE and you make it harder for them to carry out their evil authoritarian white supremacist regime. 

So demonstrating at the building is one, canvassing is two. The third, and this one is scary because it is what Renée did is: Rapid response. Take a PIRC Migra Watch training.

PIRC is the Portland Immigrants Rights Coalition. They have been doing this for a very, very long time. While many of us have been wondering what to do, PIRC and other BIPOC-led organizations have just done. They did not need to meet to discuss what to do. Their community was under attack and they did it. They showed up. They have mobilized, they have done rapid response. 

In mid-November at Marcola, ICE ambushed five Guatemalan workers who went to the BLM building to get permits so they could forage mushrooms. This is so disgusting because foraging is such a traditional Indigenous practice and these people were trying to do it the ‘right way.’ They went to the building to get the permits. They participated in our system.

ICE had done surveillance and ambushed them at that appointment and took them into custody, and then proceeded to hunt their family members and others in the community down.

I was one of the first three people on scene to respond to that. Between when our people arrived. When 20 ICE cars and 30 agents left, two hours later they managed to detain zero other people. 

Rapid response works. They do not want to do what they do with eyes on them. We must be those eyes. And to do that, we need courage. So please take a PIRC Migra Watch training. Get plugged in with local rapid response, start with PIRC, but then do the rest as well. 

Patty Hine: My name is Patty Hine. I’m co-president of 350 Eugene, a climate justice organization, and a proud member of the new Activist Coalition of Eugene Springfield. I’m a gender-nonconforming lesbian (thank you) and a career Navy officer.

I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That is why I’m here today. Trump is domestic enemy number one. We’re all here because we see our country being taken over by a fascist dictator.

That lawless act that his regime did yesterday with the coldblooded killing of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis by an ICE agent is abhorrent, and we are not going to take it.

We’re outraged. We’re angry, but it’s time to turn this anger into action. Civil resistance is the answer. Civil resistance is both personal and collective. It is nonviolent and the root of our power. It is active, not passive, and it means removing our support for the pillars of the fascist regime right here, right now, in our city, and in our own lives.

The pillars include, for example, cowardly, complicit media outlets and listening to their bulls—t, buying up big corporations that are owned by elite billionaires and the military state that does his bidding.

We have an opportunity here in Eugene. One of the pillars of Trump’s regime is ICE, and they’re right there. ICE is Trump’s personal enforcer. They’re his Gestapo. Their budget is bigger than the Army’s. And they’re rapidly and recklessly hiring the most violent, cruel, and vindictive humans, and their numbers have grown from 10,000 to 22,000.

They are invading our cities and terrorizing our communities and they’re murdering innocent people, people who are exercising their constitutionally-protected rights to assemble and to free speech, just like you today,

Here in Eugene, deportations are dramatically down because protestors like us are showing up every day in their faces, saying, No to lawlessness. No to them frightening and destabilizing our neighbors with vicious attacks. No to this unaccountable cruelty. 

The tide is turning. Coldblooded murders do wake Americans up. We’ve been distracted and complacent too long, but there’s still time to act if we act now. ICE is our target for civil resistance. Communities across our country can and are resisting, and we can win, but we must show up in huge numbers. We must join the growing movement.

Grab a flyer, grab a whistle kit, find out what you can do and do it. It has always been so. People power is more powerful than the people in power. Let’s be fierce. Thank you.

Presenter: From the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Rob Fisette: 

Rob Fisette: We’re gathered here today because yesterday, almost exactly 24 hours ago, an ICE agent in Minneapolis, murdered in cold blood 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good. Say her name: 

Renée Nicole Good. 

Last night, several community members held a vigil over at the Federal Building in her honor, and thousands of people took the street in Minneapolis, New York, LA, Chicago, Tucson—all over the country, people are no longer willing to take this brutal terroristic force on the streets of our cities.

Renée Nicole Good. (Renée Nicole Good.) She was a mother. a daughter, a partner, an entire universe, a worker. She was what we at the Lane County Immigrant Defense Network—and others here who work in rapid response and demonstrate at the Federal Building every week—we train and encourage people to do that every day, what she was doing: watching, monitoring, using her First Amendment rights to speak, to assemble, and to record ICE as they terrorize our community. That’s all.

We have people here in Eugene, in Lane County who do that every day, who did that yesterday, who are doing it today, who will do it tomorrow, and until we win.

So we’ll not be intimidated by their violence. They claim that this killing was in self-defense. (They’re lying!) It’s an outrageous lie meant to sow confusion among our people. That’s all it is.

But we’re not confused. Of course, the administration is going to double down that this murder is good, that it was justified. Concurrently they will try to weave a ‘bad apple’ narrative about the person who killed Renée Nicole Good, and of course this is just to confuse people and get them back into their normal working stream of life. 

But we cannot be confused. We have to call a thing what it is. ICE is a death squad. Murders like these are inevitable. They’re an inevitable part of the waves of violence that the Trump administration has unleashed across the country. 

So while we fight today for justice for Renée Nicole Good, we’re building alongside PCUN’s Day Without an Immigrant campaign toward the capacity for the general strike, that we need to shut it down, to defeat this administration and the entire billionaire agenda in its totality, to build toward the end of this entire racist system.

And so you should all sign the strike pledge if you haven’t. And join the MLK Day Without An Immigrant march. That’s the next Day Without An Immigrant celebration. That’s on Monday, Jan. 19. 

Presenter: Protesters in Eugene join others nationwide to mourn the shooting death of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and share information about the next big protest. The local NAACP will celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jan. 19 by combining its Eugene march and its Springfield march with the Day Without an Immigrant protest.

Field recordings by Todd Boyle for KEPW News. You can see the event in its entirety at Todd’s YouTube channel.