Expert warns painting slain anti-ICE activist as ‘George Floyd 2.0’ will fail
Despite large protests erupting in Minneapolis and throughout the country, an immigration expert said that the left’s attempt to paint slain anti-ICE protester Renee Nicole Good as "George Floyd 2.0" is "just not sticking."
Leading Democrats have responded with outrage after an ICE officer killed Good in a Wednesday confrontation. The Trump administration has said the agent fired in self-defense in response to Good allegedly attempting to run him over with her vehicle.
Democrats have rushed to portray it as an example of unjust violence by the Trump administration.
Hillary Clinton posted on X on Thursday that "last night, at the corner where an ICE agent murdered Renee Good, thousands of Minnesotans gathered in the frigid dark to protest her killing."
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Clinton said that "in the face of this administration’s lawless violence, solidarity is the answer," adding, "They want to mold America to their cruelty. We refuse."
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to "get the f--- out of Minneapolis" during a Wednesday press conference, a sentiment that was echoed by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who also posted to the Department of Homeland Security, "Get out of our city."
Amid widespread protests, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the state's National Guard was prepared to deploy if necessary, saying, "We've never been at war with our federal government."
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said that a lot has changed in the several years since Floyd’s killing, including a decline in trust of the mainstream media and a subsequent surge in independent journalism.
"This isn't 2020 anymore, and a lot of Americans' eyes have opened during 2020 from the COVID shutdowns, the mandates, the censorship, the nightly riots, the election fraud, and it's just not going to work anymore," said Ries. "People can see what's really happening and decide for themselves, not just take mainstream media's word for it or mainstream media omission of facts as the truth."
Ries said that as soon as the fatal shooting happened on Wednesday, she knew "the left is going to try to make this George Floyd 2.0."
"But within 24 hours, even less, that hasn't come to pass," she said.
Ries believes this is because of both a general "distrust of the left," but also "the opportunity to see these videos, to know that this same agent had been subject to a different car dragging him and having to go to the hospital mere months ago, providing all the context that what the left is trying to push, it's just not sticking."
Vice President JD Vance said during a Thursday news conference that the ICE agent who fired the shots was involved in a harrowing incident six months prior in which he was dragged by a car and required 33 stitches to his leg. He might be "a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile," Vance said.
Despite this, Ries said that "the left is aiming all of its ire and even literally its fire at ICE, not any other federal agency, not the DEA going after drugs or fentanyl, not the FBI, not even defund the police anymore. It is solely ICE."
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"Why? Because ICE is deporting their political base," she said. "The left has built their political house of cards on mass migration, immigration fraud. Now it seems welfare fraud for political kickbacks, for votes, for headcount, for the census, which determines congressional districts, which in turn determines electoral college votes for the presidency. This is all about politics and if we had valid elections and valid censuses that only counted U.S. citizens for congressional apportionment, how different would the political map look right now? That's the question."
"The left is trying to paint this woman who was killed yesterday as a victim," she went on. "She came from out of state. What was she doing there? There are accounts where she had been in her car, leading, harassing, tracking, stalking ICE agents all day long. The agents seemed to know her, and when they told her to get out of the car, she didn't obey … So, this is on her, unfortunately."
Ries said it is the same deal with illegal immigration.
"If people come here and break the law, then that's their choice. That is their decision, and they should be personally responsible for that," she said. "We, as a sovereign nation, enforcing our laws, should deport them. And there's nothing wrong with that. We shouldn't apologize for it."
"For too long, we've not held people personally responsible," Ries concluded. "We need to make personal responsibility great again and stop trying to make the perpetrators the victim."