'A rage inside of me': Vietnam vet who jabbed Trump joins protests after ICE killing

Ronn Easton was out for lunch in Minneapolis last Thursday when he drove by a federal building now serving as a command center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one of whose agents shot dead a 37-year-old mother, Renee Nicole Good, in the city on Wednesday.

Easton, 76, said he felt compelled to stop and participate in a protest outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, Minn. Catching media attention, he ended up interviewed on national TV.

“You could tell by the way I was dressed that I did not intend to go there. I wasn't going to go there protesting in a f—- fur coat. That was not my intent,” Easton told Raw Story.

Yet, Easton said, “I had to. My brain would not settle down.”

On Friday, Easton again felt the urge to respond to “rage” that rose in him after an ICE agent shot Good dead, as she drove her Honda Pilot away from a scene where federal agents had performed an immigration enforcement operation.

Easton dropped flowers at the site where Good was killed by an agent identified as Jonathan Ross, a 10-year ICE veteran.

“I've never done that. Never. But I had to do it this time. For some reason there's something inside of me that's telling me to do this,” Easton said.

“To see people, the hate, the vitriol in this country is really starting to take an effect on me, because never mind that this was a mother that was killed, people are talking about her sexuality.”

Good’s wife said in a statement they were supporting neighbors when the confrontation with ICE took place on a street near their home.

Administration officials have not hesitated to vilify Good.

In a press conference Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of “stalking and impeding” ICE officers whose vehicles were stuck at the scene due to snow.

Noem also claimed Good “proceeded to weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.”

President Donald Trump used social media to blame Good for her own death.

Vice President JD Vance called the killing of Good “a tragedy of her own making.”

But as media analyses of video of the incident have undercut such readings, so local and state officials have strongly disputed such accounts.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged people not to “believe this propaganda machine.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called ICE’s characterization of the incident “bull—-.”

‘On a hair trigger’

On Tuesday, ICE said its “largest ever” operation was under way in Minneapolis, with as many as 2,000 agents deployed.

Easton, who lives in Little Canada, Minn., outside Minneapolis-St. Paul, said the ICE crackdown had affected businesses he frequents, including restaurants in St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood.

Ronn Easton (provided photo)

“There's a rage that is inside of me that I'm trying my damnedest to deal with, seeing people, families torn apart, businesses that I support terrorized by ICE, people that I love affected,” Easton said.

Easton became 100 percent disabled after serving in Vietnam.

Diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, tinnitus, neuropathy and Type 2 diabetes were linked to exposure to Agent Orange, the cancer- and neurological disease-causing herbicide used to clear enemy hiding spots, Raw Story reported last month.

Raw Story first spoke to Easton about his engagement with Home of the Brave, a nonprofit focused on portraying what it calls “catastrophic harm” caused by the Trump administration.

Easton said ICE deployments near his home made him feel “on a hair trigger.”

“I have been purposefully avoiding confronting ICE or anybody else, for that matter, because I've been struggling,” he said.

“I'm trying to just maintain my sanity and keep a lid on my anger, and it's getting increasingly hard.”

But Easton said ICE targeting “the lowest hanging fruit,” including “mothers and children,” had made him want to speak up even more.

“This is my home,” he said.

“This backbiting bull— and everything that people have died and fought for being stripped away — oh, I can't handle this.”

‘Tension is as high’

Easton said tension on the streets of Minneapolis was “palpable” and “comparable” to that generated in summer 2020, after Derek Chauvin, then a Minneapolis police officer, killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, an incident that sparked a national racial reckoning amid the Black Lives Matter movement.

Now, Easton said, “The tension is as high, but it's different because then you had a lot of outside agitators coming into town trying to stir up people, and they did.”

Civil unrest following Floyd’s murder included arson and looting. Easton said he encourages peaceful protests, as violence “destroys your message.”

The Trump administration has deployed the National Guard in Democratic cities throughout the country. Easton said it was “trying to induce martial law.

“That is the reason why it is imperative that this be peaceful. No matter what you do, it has to be peaceful, but it has to be hard-hitting.”

Nonetheless, Easton said he expected violence from ICE only to get worse — particularly in light of events in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, where ICE agents shot two people.

“It already has,” Easton said.