How Trump gave the green light for the killing of protestors. It’s all in the NSPM-7.

As humans, we compartmentalize. Perhaps, this is why I cannot get her off my mind. Her identity was and is my own. White, lesbian, pro-immigrant, pro-community, anti-fascist, dog lover. I was amazed at the control her wife had after understanding that ICE Agent Jonathan Ross had just executed Renee. “What did you do!?” she screamed. Had that been my wife, he would have had to kill me too. That is a judgement on myself.

This was not a random killing. It was targeted. Not Renee specifically, but any lesbian, a random pro-immigrant person, someone else who believes fascists are overthrowing our democracy, anyone who actually believes in the U.S. Constitution would have been killed by Agent Ross on that day. 

When I look at Agent Ross in that video, I see an angry man. I see an agent who did not even hear the words Renee said to him: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” He did not even see the smile on her face. His mission was to get the evidence he needed to justify his actions. That is why he used his own phone to record the encounter, to record her license plate. 

I will argue to my dying day that he did not see her or her wife as an actual physical threat in that moment, but someone who should be taught a lesson. This analysis is based in my experience as a former agent, and teaching lessons to people who do not respect our authority is rampant in ICE, Border Patrol and CBP. Watch HBO’s Critical Incident to see all three agencies teach Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas this lesson.

Agent Ross casually walked around Renee’s car, holding his cell phone in his right hand. Based on the position of Agent Ross’ gun holster on his right hip, he is right handed and shoots right handed. This is his dominant gun hand. As a firearms instructor, Agent Ross teaches other agents in proper and important gun techniques. The most important of which is that you should always keep your dominant gun hand free. I can vividly recall hiking the Campo, California mountains at 3 am alone with my flashlight in my right hand, my dominant gun hand, and consciously moving the light to my left to avoid this error. It was a constant issue because when I did not feel threatened, muscle memory caused me to constantly use my dominant hand. I see agents with many years of experience like Agent Ross make the same error.

Agent Ross’ gun hand was occupied with holding his cell phone and recording the entire time he walked around the car. This coupled with the fact that he walked so closely to the rear of the vehicle and doing the same as he walked around the front of the vehicle, tells me he had no fear for his life in that moment. Not walking close to the rear or front of vehicles is taught in the academy and constantly in quarterly firearms qualifications training. Not walking close to cars and only approaching from the side is a forty year old concept in law enforcement.

But this does not mean Agent Ross did not see Renee and her wife as a general threat. It simply means he did not see them as a deadly threat in that moment. At the point when Renee tried to follow one agent’s orders to get out of there, at the moment when Agent Ross moved his phone to his non-dominant left hand and drew his weapon is when he judged her incorrectly, to be a deadly threat.

But there is much more to consider here.

It is important in law enforcement to know who your target is as your authorities and your actions depend on it. ICE agents authorities consist of targeting “criminal aliens” according to legal statute. Renee and her wife were neither. Agents did not even bother to question their citizenship, which means they did not consider either to be possible “criminal aliens.” ICE does not have the authority to stop, detain or arrest U.S. citizens for traffic violations which is what Renee was engaged in as she was stopped, sitting perpendicular in the road. ICE does not even have the authority to detain and arrest her for following them to warn community members of their presence as there is no law against this as long as they do not impede the agents’ work. 

We know this not only because of legal statutes but also because if they did have that legal authority, they would have just arrested her. They would have arrested all the other people in the other ICE raided cities who have done the same thing. In the past, what we saw were ICE agents calling local police to interfere with protestors or ICE ramming protestors with their own cars while falsely accusing the protestors of being the rammers.

But in October, things changed. 

ICE shot at protestor Marimar Martinez hitting her five times on October 4, 2025. Now, Renee Good is dead. What changed? Why has ICE started shooting at people trying to warn the community of their presence when they did not before?

What changed is that ICE and other agencies performing civil immigration enforcement were given a directive from the President of the United States to label them as “domestic terrorists.” On September 25, 2025, before the Martinez shooting, Trump issued an executive order titled, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Political Violence.” This EO changed the definition of who is considered by federal agents to be a “domestic terrorist” to include:

• anti-Americanism
• anti-capitalism
• anti-Christianity
• support for the overthrow of the United States Government
• extremism on migration
• extremism on race
• extremism on gender
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. 

To be fair, people like Marimar and Renee who maintain what the right-wing and this administration considers “extremism on migration” have been considered “domestic terrorists” for quite some time now. But they were not given the green light to kill them until the administration officially designated them as ‘domestic terrorists” in the executive order.

At the same time, I am left wondering if Agent Ross considered Renee and her wife to be “domestic terrorists” simply because they are LGBTQ. There is a clear rainbow sticker on the back of their car where Agent Ross stood recording. That meant that these women now had four indicators of potential “domestic terrorism” violence according to Trump’s new NSPM-7 labels: extremism on migration and gender as well as possible hostility towards those with traditional views on family and morality.

Whether or not these new labels were going through Agent Ross’ mind when he decided to kill Renee or not, will likely never be known. But there is no doubt in my mind that both the Marimar and Renee shootings were enabled, encouraged and given the green light by the new Trump Administration’s NSPM-7 executive order. September 25, 2025 was the day both women became targets of ICE, and the agents intended to teach both a lesson as well as all of us. 

Stay safe.