Renee Good's mother and brother testify in Congress about her killing by an ICE officer
The mother and brother of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in January, testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon.
The wrenching, heartbreaking testimony echoed through the Congressional hearing room, pulling listeners back to the raw moments of January when Good and Alex Pretti were killed.
The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform jointly held the hearing to discuss the deaths of Good and Pretti during Operation Metro Surge; Ruben Ray Martinez on South Padre Island, Texas, in March 2025; Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas, in July; and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine in July.
"She should still be alive. I will say it again, my daughter should still be alive," said Donna Ganger, Renee Good's mother. "It is torture that as her mom and her family, we could not protect Renee."
Donna Ganger said she believed in President Donald Trump's immigration policy.
"I am a registered Republican. I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States," Donna Ganger said. "But far more than being a Republican, I am a Christian. Jesus teaches us to forgive and I have, but what we are asking for is accountability."
"Accountability" was a term repeated over and over again by Good's loved ones, including her brother Brent Ganger.
"Our family has waited, our country has waited, and we will not wait any longer. The time is absolutely now for accountability for the deep damage done by ICE and others," said Brent Ganger. "We will not be quiet. We will not go away."
Stella Carlson, the woman in the pink coat who filmed Pretti's death also testified.
"I certainly never expected to bear witness to the final moment of a peaceful, dedicated member of my community," said Carlson.
It was her video that changed the narrative.
"I didn't know Alex, we had never met, but I saw him standing in the street with a camera in one hand, directing traffic with the other. He was calm, peaceful, handling the scene with grace," said Carlson.
She said she saw Pretti lean down to help a woman and suddenly everything changed.
"I watched Alex be taken to the ground with a swarm of masked agents on top of him," said Carlson. "And they shot him again, and again and again."
The families asked Congress to enact laws to protect citizens and hold ICE accountable. All of them said they will not stop talking about their loved one's lives and how they died.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-CA, led the forum. They said they invited their Republican colleagues, but none of them chose to come.
Good, 37, was shot Jan. 7 in south Minneapolis in the early days of Operation Metro Surge. She was a U.S. citizen and a legal observer of federal immigration actions in the city and, according to city leaders, was not a target for arrest. Her family marked what would have been her 38th birthday in April.
Pretti, also 37, was shot by Border Patrol officers on Jan. 24, about two miles away. He worked as an ICU nurse at a VA medical center. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti approached officers with a handgun, but a CBS News visual investigation of bystander video found he was holding a cellphone in one hand and nothing in the other in the moments before an officer pushed him. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said Pretti was a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.
Neither of the Border Patrol agents who fired has been publicly identified.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar earlier questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about both investigations.