Renee Good’s family deserved better than ‘shadow hearing’

As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues, the nation’s elected leaders have a moral obligation to ensure there’s rigorous oversight when someone is killed or injured by a federal immigration agent.

Congress has not entirely ignored that responsibility. Republican-led committees held oversight hearings in February following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But roughly eight months after the two Minnesotans were killed, fundamental questions about the investigations, use of force and accountability remain unanswered.

That makes what happened at a Sept. 22 congressional “shadow hearing” deeply disturbing. At the event in Washington, DC, those who have lost a loved one or watched as immigration agents gunned someone down pleaded for answers. Among those who spoke were Good’s mother and brother, Donna and Brent Ganger. Good is the Minneapolis mom fatally shot in her SUV during Operation Metro Surge in January.

Also there was Stella Carlson, who filmed the death of Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs health system nurse shot by federal agents in Minneapolis later that same month. They’d carved time out of their lives to travel to the nation’s capital and speak at the invitation of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Blumenthal had hoped the gathering would be bipartisan. But no Republican members of Congress showed up. “Just Democrats were present ... from both the House and Senate. We’ve tried to engage with our Republican colleagues over the course of this Congress about working together on conducting oversight of the Trump administration but we haven’t received any interest, which is why we had to convene this forum and it wasn’t a formal Committee hearing called by the majority,” Blumenthal’s office told me on Sept. 24.

That’s why the event wasn’t an official hearing, but instead what’s sometimes called a “congressional forum” or “shadow hearing” on Capitol Hill. This diminished status, and an audience from just one political party, is unacceptable.

The Gangers deserved better than being relegated to the shadows. So did Rachel Reyes, whose son, Ruben Ray Martinez, was killed in March 2025 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Texas.

The same is true for the family of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the 25-year-old Colombian father killed in July 2026 by an ICE agent in Maine, whose attorney came to Washington to represent them. And for Ronaldo and Lorenzo Salgado, whose father, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was also fatally shot this past July by immigration agents in Houston.

It’s an outrage that not one Republican member of Congress could be bothered to come listen to them. Minnesota Democrats Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and Rep. Ilhan Omar participated in the forum. The absence of Minnesota Republicans was both conspicuous and disappointing, especially when Minnesota’s Rep. Tom Emmer is in a powerful GOP leadership post.

Good’s and Pretti’s deaths stunned Minnesota and the nation and were a harbinger of more violence ahead. While Republicans responded with congressional oversight hearings in February, the responsibility is ongoing, especially when people continue to be seriously hurt or lose their lives.

Questions also remain unanswered about whether there have been any consequences for the agents who pulled the trigger on Good, Pretti and others who have died. Minnesota law enforcement officials have had to sue to gain access to federal evidence in the investigations of both Good’s and Pretti’s deaths.

“We still have so many questions. What are the names of the ICE agents who killed our dad? It’s been two and a half months, and we still don’t have my dad’s belongings back,” Lorenzo Salgado testified at the Blumenthal-Garcia forum.

Even if you support stronger immigration enforcement, public trust in government and law enforcement rests on the foundation that safeguards are in place to ensure that force is used appropriately. Without this accountability, the danger is that deadly encounters continue and even become the norm.

I fear that line has already been crossed. On Sunday, Sept. 20, came news of another shooting, this time involving a 28-year-old Venezuelan man in Austin, Texas.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was making a DoorDash food delivery when an ICE officer shot him during a traffic stop, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Reyes, the mom who testified at the forum and whose son died in 2025, understandably sees these shootings not as isolated episodes but as a pattern.