Exposing a domestic terror conspiracy has been a major priority of top Trump administration officials, who have gone to extraordinary lengths to find evidence that people who protest against them are agents of organized antifa cells in the pay of shadowy transnational figures.
But as a new lawsuit from ICE shooting victim Renee Good’s family lays out persuasively and in blistering detail, the real conspiracy was right in front of their eyes the whole time.
That’s because they were the conspirators.
The civil suit alleges that 17 people – starting with Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Good, and Stephen Miller, the White House goblin who masterminded the whole operation – violated laws passed in 1871 to protect Black people from the Ku Klux Klan.
Their conduct, the suit says, was “in furtherance of a carefully planned, coordinated effort between senior federal officials and private actors to make two ethnic communities in Minnesota – Minnesotans of Somali and Hispanic descent and origin – the object of aggression and abduction, and to silence, by intimidation, arrest, and violence, the neighbors and allies of those targeted communities who observed, documented, and warned of that campaign.”
Why invoke the KKK Act? Because, the suit says, Congress enacted it “to address precisely this scenario: the acts of individuals who ride the public roads with their faces covered, to strip a despised group of the equal protection of the laws, and conspiracies to accomplish the same.”
And there certainly are some similarities.
“Nothing about this resembled legitimate or lawful immigration enforcement,” the suit says. “The Twin Cities were occupied by three to four thousand masked, armed, camouflaged federal agents who roved the streets stopping people because of how they looked. They wore masks and mismatched vests, displayed no names or badge numbers, refused to identify themselves, drove unmarked cars with switched, missing, or falsified license plates, and demanded that United States citizens prove they were not, in the agents’ words, illegal.”
(Good’s family also filed a separate lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue the U.S. government in federal court for personal injury, death or property damage.)
The Klan Act suit identifies the conspirators as Ross, Miller, former DHS secretary Kristi Noem, her enforcer Corey Lewandowski, border “czar” Tom Homan, former ICE director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol hothead Gregory Bovino, and 10 unidentified federal agents.
The suit says other conspirators, though not named as defendants, include right-wing influencers Nick Shirley, Chris Rufo, and Ben Bergquam, and two companies: Palantir Technologies and Clearview AI.
They Really Hate Protesters
The objective of the conspiracy wasn’t just to terrorize and demonize immigrants; it was also to terrorize and demonize protesters and observers. “Suppression of observation was a core part of the conspiracy,” the suit says. “Renee was stopped and targeted for engaging in constitutionally protected observation of immigration enforcement.”
Indeed, the suit says Ross was using his phone to film Good before he shot her “to create social media content of violent encounters between agents and people protesting or monitoring the agents’ activity.”
Shortly after the killing, Trump officials began claiming that Good had tried to kill ICE officers with her vehicle in an act of domestic terrorism. They blamed “sanctuary politicians” for “creating an environment that encourages rampant assaults on law enforcement.” The suit notes that ICE agents soon began using Good’s death as a threat to dissuade other protesters.
Meanwhile, a “high-ranking White House official” shut state police out of the investigation. “Senior FBI officials, including the Director, instructed agents to stop investigating the killing over concerns that pursuing a civil rights investigation would undermine the President’s claims that Renee had tried to kill an officer, and pressured prosecutors to investigate [her wife] Becca instead.”
The suit identifies Miller as “the conspirator who converted the President’s stated animus into the operation’s daily orders” – which included sending agents “to the areas of Minneapolis where observers and protesters had gathered, in order to force confrontations with them.”
Days after Ross killed Good, DHS reposted a clip of Miller declaring: “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”
The suit also incorporates quotes attributed to senior DHS officials who told the Daily Mail that Miller told agents to “engage these protesters” and said they “need to be vanquished by any force necessary.” Miller, according to one quoted official, was “the architect of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths.”
Compare and Contrast
By contrast, let’s look at some of the conspiracies the government has been chasing, sometimes to absurd lengths.
Also in Minnesota, 15 anti-ICE protesters are facing federal conspiracy charges that are based on their use of traditional community organizing tactics (plus they dented a van.).
As I wrote just last month, that was the best DOJ could do after a months-long DHS spying campaign ambitiously called “Operation Puppet Master.” Undercover agents were sent into Minnesota churches and schools to surveil protest meetings. They stalked and profiled attendees and subpoenaed vast amounts of record from unions and political organizations that some of the protesters belonged to.
It’s so outrageous that conservative and libertarian groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief likening the government’s conduct to the McCarthy era. “Backed by the machinery of federal investigative and prosecutorial powers, the Trump administration has…. set out to dictate orthodoxy and suppress dissent,” the brief reads. “The scale of the government’s assault on free expression has not been seen since the Second Red Scare.” (The First Red Scare dates back to World War I.)
And consider the DOJ stupidity involved in the ongoing conspiracy case against 36 people who marched into a St. Paul church in January to hold a peaceful protest. Two independent journalists who went along to cover it, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, also face charges.
As I wrote in January, the charges were vindictive and bizarre, and the inclusion of the journalists made them a prima facie violation of the First Amendment. As I wrote in May, a scandalized magistrate judge denied the prosecution’s ridiculous request for search warrants demanding detailed information on Lemon’s YouTube subscribers. And then, as I wrote last month, DHS then did an end run around the judge, using an obscure statute applying to customs regulations that didn’t require a judge’s signature. They got tons of information, but apparently none of it showed what they wanted. There have been sooo many motions to dismiss.
Then there’s the epic collapse of the case – yes, a conspiracy case – against the so-called “Broadview Six” in Chicago. The “Exonerated Six,” as I call them, exposed spectacular misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s Office there. Judge April Perry is now investigating a possible cover-up by DOJ, the Six want a copy of communications from Washington about the case, and they may even get Perry to appoint a special prosecutor.
DOJ has won one conspiracy case, somehow persuading two credulous Texas judges that eight anti-ICE protesters there were in fact member of a “Texas antifa cell.” A cop was shot -- but several of the people sentenced to decades in prison were not remotely involved in the shooting, and one wasn’t even at the protest. That can’t stand (right?)
So what’s behind DOJ’s push here?
Well, it’s obvious. They are under orders from the White House (i.e. Miller channeling Trump) to apply Trump’s (i.e. Miller’s) Sept. 2025 presidential directive – called the NSPM-7-- that authorized the FBI to sidestep First Amendment protections in pursuit of “domestic terrorists” – like the mythical antifa.
You think maybe I’m overstating things?
Well, on Tuesday, California Sen. Alex Padilla released an FBI whistleblower's complaint – and his own letter to DOJ – alleging that Trump personally directed the FBI to criminally investigate protesters. This apparently came right after he watched a LULAC video of residents using a megaphone to warn their neighbors of ICE’s presence and remind them of their rights. The FBI then opened investigations of peaceful, legal protests – violating the Constitution – because orders.
Speaking of Bullshit Prosecutions
You may recall that last October, 30-year-old Chicago resident Marimar Martinez was charged with felony assault and accused of being a “domestic terrorist”– after a Border Patrol agent shot her five times because she was following his car around.
Charges were dropped once the defense got hold of text messages showing the agent bragging about his shooting skills.
Well, now Martinez is suing under the Tort Claims Act. Her legal team even created an animated forensic reconstruction of the shooting, which shows agent Charles Exum’s five shots, including one fired through her rear passenger window.
And lawyers for David Hearn have sent a letter asking inspectors general at DOJ and Interior to look into why their client was arrested and indicted for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool when he obviously didn’t. The answer, of course, is that federal officials were trying to curry favor with Trump, who was insanely insisting that it was vandalism – not his own shoddy contractors – who damaged the landmark. (He’s still saying that!)
The Week in the Courts
Hundreds of district court judges and nine out of 11 judicial circuit panels have found the Trump administration’s “mandatory detention” rule flatly in violation of the Due Process Clause, but the Supreme Court will have the final say this session. The policy, which is causing untold suffering to immigrants and their families, denies detainees the chance to seek release on bond, even if they have lived in the U.S. a long time and have strong roots in the community.
DOJ is now 0-26 after a federal judge denied its effort to obtain Georgia’s unredacted voter list.
In an unexpected ruling, a federal judge in Florida concluded that a 40-year-old federal statute that the Trump administration has used to prosecute noncitizen voting violates the Constitution. Judge David S. Leibowitz noted that “Until very recently, no federal court has been presented with the following question about that statute: Did Congress have Constitutional authority to enact it?” He found the answer pretty obvious: nope. “Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute,” he wrote. That power “is reserved for the States, and limits Congress.”
A pro-immigration coalition filed a lawsuit challenging two recent policy changes that make getting a green card more fraught for immigrants already in the United States. They would be required to depart the United States and initiate the green-card process from abroad, or risk denial of their applications. The lawsuit charges violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Due Process Clause.
End Notes
Mark your calendars! NO KINGS: VOTE EARLY is on Saturday, October 17. It’s not a march, it’s “the next step of reclaiming our power after a year of mass mobilizations…. It’s a day of nonpartisan voter participation, being in community with each other, and making sure every eligible voter has a plan, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice count.”
From the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, a major new report: “Architecture of Cruelty: Third Country Removal Agreements and the Second Trump Administration.” It’s “the first major analysis of the removal arrangements that have allowed this system to function, one riddled with violations of both domestic and international human rights protections.” Includes a timeline and an archive of agreements between the U.S. and third countries.
From the American Prospect: “The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline; In Chicago, progressive alderpeople held up a contract until a private equity firm was forced to dispatch Omni Air International, protecting thousands of immigrants from deportation.”
From Gambit, in New Orleans: “Shrouded in secrecy’: Louisiana’s new ICE facility raises more questions than answers,” about protests against a proposed new detention facility for children in Alexandria, La., whose airport is the main hub of all ICE deportation flights inside the U.S. and around the world.
From NBC News: “How the shooting death of a Houston father is igniting Latino politics in Texas,” about a community demanding justice for the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an ICE agent.
From the Kansas Reflector: “Trump’s immigration sweeps leave southwest Kansas communities looking for way forward.” The result? “Restaurants closed, motel managers cancelled reservations and the area’s large beef processing facilities shortened or called off shifts last week as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers rushed in and immigrant employees didn’t show up for work.”