‘She was murdered:’ Area residents protest in Belleville over fatal ICE shooting
Metro-east residents gathered Saturday in downtown Belleville to express their outrage after an immigration agent fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Renee Good died Wednesday when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot her in her car on a residential street. Federal officials have alleged Good was trying to run him over and said the agent acted in self-defense.
But several local residents on Saturday disputed that account. Based on widely shared bystander videos from multiple angles, protesters described Good’s shooting as “murder” in interviews and chants during the demonstration.
They called for an end to President Donald Trump’s immigration operations.
Protester Thiem Flynn of Belleville said it’s been disappointing seeing the military and federal law enforcement “fighting” citizens under Trump.
She recalled dreaming of coming to America before she immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in the 1970s.
“I never saw any president like him,” Flynn said. “It’s so sad.”
Another protester, Margaret Riggs of Swansea, criticized the administration’s massive budget increases for ICE to ramp up deportations and questioned immigration agents’ tactics and training.
“I think that it’s all encouraging an environment of a police state, and it’s moving away from democracy,” Riggs said. “It’s moving into fascism, and we need to yell about it.”
Event draws crowd
Southwestern Illinois Democratic Women, a grassroots political organization, and a local family helped promote Saturday’s event. Together, they drew at least 85 people to downtown Belleville.
The group has been organizing weekly protests against the Trump administration on Saturday mornings in Belleville’s Public Square since March. Some members said attendance has dipped over time, but they usually see an increase after major news events like the Minneapolis shooting.
Belleville resident Danny Gula also created a Facebook event to bring people out Saturday to protest Good’s death. He said the idea came from his 14-year-old daughter Rosalynn, a freshman at Belleville East High School, who wanted to speak out against the shooting.
“ICE is shooting civilians that are just present, and that’s not OK,” Rosalynn Gula said.
She also wanted to protest ICE operations, generally, because many of her friends are the children of immigrants who she said could be profiled and detained if immigration agents came to Belleville.
“That’s just not something that I want, so I’m fighting against it, because if we don’t do it, then who else will?” she said.
She carried a sign Saturday that read, “I love immigrants.”
Elsewhere in the metro-east, more than 60 people also gathered Saturday in Highland to protest ICE and the Trump administration.
More issues mentioned
About a dozen Belleville protesters said the policies and issues they opposed from the Trump administration change on a near-daily basis: from funding cuts for food stamps to the U.S. takeover of Venezuela and fewer vaccines recommended for children.
Protester Susan Link’s sign showed the frequency that Trump’s decisions or statements raised concerns in just the past week.
On one side, she wrote “No war” and on the other “ICE out for good.”
She said she was referring to possible wars from Trump’s Jan. 3 military operation to seize control of Venezuela and his comments throughout the week about the potential for another forcible takeover in Greenland.
“I feel like it’s old now,” Link said. “I mean, I made this because at the beginning of the week, we were worried about war. Now, we’re worried about ICE. It just keeps changing.”
Impact of protests
Kathy Harres of Columbia said she has been attending protests since the Women’s March in 2017, after Trump’s first inauguration.
“I had to jerry-rig this sign because I’m running out of signs,” Harres said at Saturday’s demonstration.
In that time, she said she’s seen solidarity grow among Americans who are “not OK with what’s going on and not acquiescing to the horrors that are taking place in this country every day.”
Several protesters said they also hoped elected officials with the power to take action were listening to their concerns. Link said she was encouraged by a vote Thursday to advance legislation requiring Trump to seek approval from Congress before taking additional military action in Venezuela.
Five Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in supporting the resolution, including U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley from Missouri.
“I try hard to have hope,” Link said. “Congress, little by little, is changing.”
