On the morning of January 7, 2026, an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross fired three shots in under one second into a Honda Pilot on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis. Renée Good was 37, an American citizen, a writer, and the mother of a six-year-old. She died at Hennepin County Medical Center. The government said the agent had been run over. A New York Times video analysis found he wasn't.
Seventeen days later, on a sidewalk on Nicollet Avenue, Border Patrol agents pepper-sprayed and tackled Alex Pretti — a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs — then shot him ten times in about five seconds, six of those shots while he lay motionless on the ground. DHS said he came at officers with a handgun. Reuters and the BBC reviewed the video and found he was holding a cell phone. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled it a homicide.
This is not a border policy. It is a federal police force operating in American cities, and the country can see it. A YouGov poll found 55% of Americans say ICE sometimes or often wrongfully arrests U.S. citizens, and 59% say it uses unnecessary force against them. ProPublica documented more than 170 U.S. citizens held by immigration agents in nine months — including nearly 20 children, two of them with cancer — with charges never filed or dismissed in roughly 50 of those cases.
Almost every Republican in Congress has stayed quiet through all of it. But some did more than stay quiet. Here are the ones with the worst records.
Jim Jordan chairs the committee that oversees ICE. A private prison company gave a group run by his ex-chief of staff $250,000.
Jim Jordan chairs the House Judiciary Committee, whose own website says its oversight of the Justice Department and Homeland Security is "particularly important in our time." He is the person Congress relies on to check ICE.
On July 15, 2025 — eleven days after the One Big Beautiful Bill passed — the GEO Group, the largest private operator of ICE detention centers in the country, sent $250,000 to the American Liberty Action Fund. That's a 501(c)(4) "dark money" group that advertises on its own website that "contributions to ALAF are not publicly disclosed, and there are no limits on contributions from individuals or corporations." It shares its president, secretary, and treasurer with a Jordan-aligned super PAC. The president of both, Ray Yonkura, was Jordan's chief of staff for nearly a decade. The donation only became public because the super PAC accidentally disclosed it in an FEC filing.
GEO lobbied on that bill before it passed. The bill nearly triples ICE's budget and funds a doubling of detention space — GEO's business. Jordan cheered it on, posting that it "delivers Big, Beautiful Deportations." The quarter-million dwarfs anything GEO had given him before: $12,500 to his campaign across 2022 through 2024.
Federal contractors are barred from making political contributions. Meanwhile a former GEO executive, David Venturella, was tapped to run ICE — and when three Democrats on Jordan's own committee raised conflict-of-interest concerns about GEO's people inside DHS, no Republican signed the letter.
The man responsible for holding ICE accountable is financially entangled with the company that profits when ICE locks more people up.
Byron Donalds took $16,000 from the same private prison company — and wants to run Florida's prisons
The GEO Group was the ninth-largest source of money to Byron Donalds' campaign in the 2024 cycle, giving $16,000 between its PAC and its employees. Donalds is running for Governor of Florida — a job that would put him in charge of the state's corrections contracts and its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
While ICE agents were killing people in Minneapolis, Donalds was attacking Florida Democrats for opposing new ICE detention facilities near Orlando. His statement: "ICE is under attack. DHS is under attack. Law and order is under attack. As Florida's next Governor, I won't stand for it." He added that he would "work hand in hand with President Trump and law enforcement to protect Floridians."
ICE is the one doing the attacking. Two Americans are dead. Donalds' concern was for the agency.
Michael Guest wrote the checks, and says it isn't enough yet
Michael Guest chairs the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement. He is one of the members who actually decides how much money ICE gets, and in a Newsweek op-ed published by his own committee he took credit for $46 billion for the border barrier, $45 billion to expand ICE's detention capacity, and roughly $35 billion to hire more CBP and ICE officers.
That $45 billion in detention money is what GEO Group was lobbying for. And Guest's message was that the job is only half done: "the work to ensure long-lasting border security and interior enforcement is far from over."
He also described sending letters to more than 200 nonprofits "suspected of providing services and benefits to illegal aliens," and promised to expand those probes. Not oversight of the agency shooting people — investigations of the charities that help them.
Tommy Tuberville told ICE agents to shoot back
The day after Renée Good was killed, Tommy Tuberville posted: "To all our ICE agents in Minnesota and across the country: if you are violently attacked, SHOOT BACK." In a follow-up he told officials to "stop demonizing federal and local law enforcement for doing their jobs."
An unarmed American mother had just been shot three times through her car window by a federal agent, and Alabama's senator — now running for Governor — used the moment to tell agents nationwide to open fire. His opponent called it what it was: rhetoric that "may well escalate violence between law enforcement officers and civilians." Alabamians noticed. Protesters showed up outside his events with signs reading "No ICE in Alabama."
Derrick Van Orden blamed a governor. Glenn Grothman called it murder, then took it back.
The day Alex Pretti was shot, Derrick Van Orden posted that Minnesota's governor "is a moron who is getting people killed to cover up for the massive fraud he oversaw." He then compared Minnesota Democrats' criticism of immigration enforcement to "rhetoric the Confederates used against the Union prior to the Civil War," and called it sedition. A nurse had been shot ten times by federal agents that morning. Van Orden's response was that the elected officials objecting were the traitors.
His colleague Glenn Grothman actually got it right at first. On January 27, he said the video "looks pretty damning," that "it looks like they did something wrong," and that DHS "is going to have to do a better job of educating their people to make sure this sort of murder doesn't result." Three days later he walked all of it back: "I don't want to mischaracterize what happened there as a murder." He said he regretted the word "right away."
The medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Grothman's honest reaction lasted 72 hours.
Michael Rulli wants five years in prison for standing too close to an ICE agent
Almost everything the public knows about how Renée Good and Alex Pretti died came from bystanders with phones. Video from the street is why the official accounts fell apart.
Michael Rulli introduced a bill to make that a federal crime. His HALO Act would make it a felony — punishable by up to five years in prison — to come within 25 feet of an on-duty immigration officer after a verbal warning, if the officer says you intend to "harass" them. Harassment is defined as conduct causing "substantial emotional distress" with no legitimate purpose. Who decides which purpose is legitimate? The officer with the gun.
Rulli's justification: "The American people voted for law and order in November 2024." Nobody voted to make it a felony to film a federal agent from across the street.
Harriet Hageman told a room full of constituents she didn't trust their facts
In late January, Harriet Hageman — Wyoming's congresswoman, now running for the Senate — held a town hall at Casper College and was asked why she hadn't condemned the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good.
She offered that "what has happened in Minnesota is a terrible tragedy for the woman and the man who were killed." When a constituent pressed her on ICE violating the Constitution, she answered: "I'm not sure that I trust your facts." The room booed. Someone shouted that Pretti had been shot ten times in the back. She gathered her papers and left while people called her a coward.
She was the only one of these eight who even had to stand in a room and hear the question. She didn't have an answer.
This is the party position now
Look at what's actually on this list. The chairman with oversight of ICE is tied to its biggest contractor. The subcommittee chairman who funds it wants to fund it more and investigate the charities instead. A senator told agents to shoot. A congressman wants prison time for filming. One of them admitted the truth and took it back three days later. None of these are fringe figures — they're chairmen and candidates for governor and senator.
There's a simple test for anyone who says they believe in the Second Amendment because the government might someday turn on the people: the government just did, on video, twice in one month, and these are the people who cheered. The whole argument was a costume.
Ask every Republican on your ballot this fall one question, and don't let them change the subject: was it wrong to shoot Renée Good and Alex Pretti? The ones who can't say yes have told you everything.
