This was not a fun cartoon to write or draw.
On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was shot to death in her car by Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent who has been with the agency a decade.
(Wait, January 7? Has it really only been two days? It feels like so much longer).
The same day, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement falsely accusing Good of attempting to murder ICE agents by running them down, adding:
An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers.
With his characteristic muddle of malice, stupidity, and delusion, President Trump twice claimed that Good actually had run over Ross: “She didn’t try to run him over, she ran him over.”
Several news agencies (such as this well-made New York Times video) did thorough frame-by-frame analysis of several videos that were taken, showing that the administration was lying about the shooting.
Of course, all police departments – not just ICE – will justify shooting people by claiming they were in deadly peril, or reasonably thought they were. It’s the get out of jail free card for law enforcement, even in cases like an unarmed Black man being shot in the back. And although there are so many infuriating things about the murder of Renee Good, somehow that really got under my craw.
Eventually, I wrote this cartoon, and over several drafts kept whittling it down and simplifying it until there were only two words of dialog. I hope it’s effective.
I went back and forth on how malicious and evil to make the ICE agent in the final panel. Then I read about the ICE shooting of Marimar Martinez, just two months before Good’s death. Martinez, like Good, was accused by an ICE agent of trying to kill him with her car. Martinez, despite being shot five times, survived, and the case against her was so weak the government quietly dropped all charges.
The agent who shot Martinez, Charles Exum, sent texts to his fellow ICE agents gloating about the shooting. His texts included: “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” “I’m up for another round of ‘fuck around and find out’” and “Sweet. My fifteen mins of fame. Lmao.”
Exum, by the way, is a supervisory agent and a shooting instructor for ICE. He’s teaching new agents how to behave. There’s no reason to think that his disgusting attitudes aren’t the norm within ICE.
ICE is a toxic agency, and deserves to be shuttered.
There is always sad and enraging news going on somewhere in the world. I don’t think that should stop us from saying: Happy New Year! Let’s fervently hope it’s a better one.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows two people on a sidewalk: One is a masked ICE agent, the other a woman carrying a protest sign which says “abolish ICE.”
PANEL 1
The ICE agent glares at the woman. The woman’s back is to him.
PANEL 2
The woman turns her head, spotting the ICE agent, who has angry body language.
PANEL 3
The ICE agent has drawn his gun and fires three times. The woman falls.
PANEL 4
The ICE agent speaks directly to us, pulling down his mask so we can see his gleeful expression. The woman’s corpse lies in the background.
ICE AGENT: Self-defense!
Time is the ultimate WMD. Abolish the fourth dimension!