OVER 1,000 protests erupted across the US at the weekend over the extra-judicial murder of Renee Nicole Good by an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Good, a 37 year old mother of three, was brutally shot three times in the head by the agent, later identified as Jonathan E. Ross, last Wednesday, immediately sparking protests in the city of Minneapolis.
The immediate reaction from the Trump administration, even before her identity was known, was to brand Good as a ‘domestic terrorist’, with Trump blaming ‘the radical left’ and defending Ross, arguing that he acted in self-defence, and claiming the ICE agent was ‘run over’ despite video evidence clearly proving this was a lie.
Videos of the incident show Good attempting to drive away before Ross approaches the vehicle from the front and fires three shots into the driver’s side window.
The day after Good’s killing, US Vice President JD Vance insisted that the ICE officer who killed her is ‘protected by absolute immunity’ from prosecution.
But on Sunday, thousands braved freezing conditions to march through Minneapolis towards the residential street where Good was shot, highlighting the massive spread of fury throughout the US sparked by her killing and other recent shootings involving other federal immigration enforcement agents.
The reaction of the Trump administration to the peaceful demonstrations demanding justice for Good and for ICE to get out of their city, was to send ‘hundreds’ more federal agents to Minnesota to ‘protect’ ICE and Border Control agents.
US workers are being taught the harsh lesson that American imperialism today has ripped up all the previous rules and has brought its wars against the people of the world back home.
On the same day that Good was brutally killed by an ICE agent acting with complete immunity from any law, Trump gave an interview to the New York Times where he insisted that his ‘own morality’ is the only limit on his power, and: ‘I don’t need international law’ adding: ‘I’m not looking to hurt people.’
For someone not looking to hurt people, Trump has launched US attacks on seven countries – Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela – during the first year of his presidency, along with the US support for the ongoing Zionist genocide in Gaza.
Trump’s ‘morals’ are those of a bankrupt US ruling capitalist class that is prepared to launch wars abroad to impose its dictatorship over the world and wars against the working class at home.
To this end, Trump has unleashed thousands of balaclava-clad ICE and federal agents in cities across the US, an action designed to intimidate and threaten workers and youth who oppose imperialist wars and who resist the massive austerity that bankrupt capitalism demands they accept.
In the UK, a similar tearing up of the old laws is being pursued by Starmer’s Labour government.
Starmer refuses to condemn the illegal kidnapping of Venezuelan president Maduro, refuses to condemn Israel for genocide while the Labour government has drawn up plans to massively increase police powers to ban protests in England and Wales.
These plans, contained in an amendment to the Crime and Policing bill, would give police powers to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of repeated protests when imposing conditions on demonstrations.
This amendment has been denounced as a ‘draconian crackdown on our rights to freedom of expression and assembly’ by over 40 civil society groups including the TUC and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The working class in the US and UK must intervene to put an end to capitalism’s war on two fronts by demanding their trade union leaders call immediate general strikes to bring down the Trump and Starmer governments, replacing them with workers’ governments and socialism.
This calls for the building up of the WRP and Young Socialists in the UK, and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the US and Europe to provide the leadership required to dump bankrupt capitalism in the dustbin of history, where it belongs, with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
