Antonio Romanucci is not describing Renee Good’s killing as a case that begins and ends with the ICE agent who fired the shots. In explaining the two federal lawsuits filed by her family, the attorney laid out a broader legal strategy examining both what happened to Renee on a Minneapolis street and the federal operation that put Jonathan Ross there. One case seeks to hold the United States responsible for the conduct surrounding her death; the other names Ross and senior federal officials individually and asks whether responsibility for Renee’s killing reaches through Operation Metro Surge and the people her family says built and directed it.
Renee, a mother of three, was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7 during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Her family’s complaint says Ross fired through her windshield and then through the driver’s-side window as her vehicle turned away, striking Renee in the head. The family says no federal agent was in the vehicle’s path when he fired, making the circumstances of the shooting central to their wrongful-death and excessive-force claims.
The two lawsuits are built to examine different layers of responsibility. The first names the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act and seeks damages for Renee’s death through claims including battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence. Becca also brings claims arising from witnessing Renee’s killing, making that case the family’s route for challenging what federal personnel did to Renee and the harm that followed.
The second lawsuit moves beyond Ross and into the federal structure surrounding Operation Metro Surge. It names Ross along with Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Tom Homan, Todd Lyons, Greg Bovino and unidentified federal agents, and invokes federal civil-rights law, a Fourth Amendment excessive-force theory and Minnesota claims. Rather than treating Renee’s death as an isolated encounter with one ICE agent, the complaint places the operation, the officials accused of directing it and the agents carrying it out inside the same alleged chain of accountability.
Romanucci made that theory explicit in his interview. He said the family is alleging that Operation Metro Surge grew from a conspiracy that “started from the very top,” then pointed to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Minneapolis and the officials beneath him who helped carry the operation forward. Trump is not named as a defendant, but Romanucci said the family’s legal theory places him at the center of the alleged conspiracy and that the lawyers would seek his deposition if they could overcome the obstacles surrounding testimony from a sitting president.
That theory gives the second lawsuit its central mechanism. Renee’s family says federal leadership helped create Operation Metro Surge, the operation sent thousands of federal personnel into Minneapolis, and what agents did on the street cannot be separated from the structure and direction above them. The case therefore traces the family’s alleged chain from federal leadership, through the operation and its deployment, to Ross and the shots he fired on Portland Avenue.
The timing of the lawsuits comes from the legal process rather than a new decision in the criminal investigation. Romanucci said the family had to wait through the required six-month federal claims period before filing and that the period expired in September. He said the civil cases were not held back while the family waited to see whether prosecutors would charge Ross, separating their civil strategy from the still-unresolved criminal investigation into Renee’s death.
Romanucci also connected the family’s legal theory to what was said about Renee after she was killed. During the interview, he pointed to statements from administration officials attacking Renee’s character and to the misogynistic remark he says Ross made immediately after firing the shot that struck her in the head. Romanucci says those words, together with the broader statements made about Renee and the communities targeted during Operation Metro Surge, support the family’s argument that hostility and animus surrounding the operation extended from the rhetoric around it to the conduct of people carrying it out.
The family’s filings also challenge what happened after Renee was shot. Their lawyers say federal agents failed to provide medical aid and prevented a bystander who identified himself as a physician from helping her, while arguing that Ross’s use of deadly force violated federal rules governing firearms and moving vehicles. Those claims widen the court’s examination beyond why Ross fired to what federal agents did in the moments before, during and after Renee was fatally wounded.
Ross has not been criminally charged, and the separate investigation into Renee’s killing remains open. The White House called the lawsuits baseless and said the administration would defend against them, while Renee’s family is pursuing the civil cases as a separate route to evidence, testimony and accountability. The civil litigation now puts a broader question before the court: whether responsibility reaches beyond one ICE agent to the operation surrounding him and the officials the family says shaped it.
For Renee’s family, that legal architecture serves a loss that cannot be reduced to statutes, defendants or federal procedure. Becca Good has spoken about their children growing up without their mother, while the lawsuits seek examination of the machinery surrounding Renee’s death. Romanucci’s explanation makes clear that the family is pursuing accountability from the man who fired the shots while also trying to establish whether responsibility reaches into the federal operation and chain of officials they say put him on that street in the first place.
Renee Good’s family is taking its fight for accountability into federal court. Americans Against ICE will keep following these cases as they move forward — the filings, testimony, evidence, and the officials the family is trying to bring under scrutiny.
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