ICE Officer Who Shot Renee Good Is Veteran SWAT-Trained Deportation Officer With History Of Violent Confrontations, Court Testimony Shows
Multiple major news outlets have named Jonathan Ross as the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Sworn testimony from Minnesota’s federal district court, obtained exclusively by WIRED, confirms Ross is a veteran deportation officer with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division, a member of ICE’s Special Response Team (the agency’s SWAT-equivalent tactical unit), a certified firearms trainer, and a former leader of multi-agency federal task forces that include FBI personnel.
The testimony comes from a December 2025 criminal trial tied to a June 2025 encounter that shares striking parallels with the confrontation that ended in Good’s death.
Per Ross’s own testimony from that trial, he led a team tasked with arresting Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala, a man subject to an administrative warrant for unauthorized presence in the United States. Because Muñoz-Guatemala’s home sat directly across from a local school, and immigration agents did not have a warrant to enter the residence, Ross testified the team opted to follow him in unmarked vehicles rather than attempt an arrest at his home.
Muñoz-Guatemala’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
According to Ross’s December testimony and a New York Times review of an FBI agent’s affidavit linked to the case, Ross approached Muñoz-Guatemala’s vehicle and ordered him to roll down his window and open his door. Ross, who drove an unmarked vehicle, wore tactical ranger green and gray clothing with his badge clipped to his belt, told the court he eventually broke the vehicle’s rear driver’s side window and reached inside the car — at which point Muñoz-Guatemala pulled forward to escape.
Ross testified he was dragged by the vehicle at a speed he estimated was “40 miles an hour at least, if not more.” He drew his Taser and fired it at Muñoz-Guatemala, who continued driving and ultimately shook Ross loose from the car. Ross told the court the incident left him with injuries that required 33 stitches.
Per the affidavit, Muñoz-Guatemala called 911 immediately after the encounter to report he had been assaulted by ICE agents, a call that led to his own arrest. Last month, he was convicted of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
Outlets including the Minnesota Star-Tribune, The Intercept, and The Guardian were the first to publicly identify Ross as the officer who killed Good, a mother who had recently relocated to Minneapolis. Video footage of the Minneapolis shooting shows a federal agent firing into Good’s vehicle as she attempted to leave the enforcement scene. Independent video analysis conducted by The New York Times and The Washington Post confirms the officer was never struck by Good’s vehicle, and that Good appeared to be turning her wheel to avoid contact with the agent.
During Thursday’s White House press briefing, Vice President JD Vance addressed the shooting, and his comments confirmed multiple key details about Ross and his 2025 encounter with Muñoz-Guatemala. “That very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car, six months ago, 33 stitches in his leg,” Vance said. “so you think maybe he is a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirsti Noem has repeatedly labeled Good’s actions as an intentional act of “domestic terrorism.” An independent FBI investigation into Good’s killing remains ongoing.
In a statement provided to WIRED, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the department “is not going to expose the name of this officer. He acted according to his training.” McLaughlin added that federal immigration agents “are under constant threat from violent agitators” due to doxxing, and called on the Minnesota Star Tribune — the first outlet to publish Ross’s name — to “delete their story immediately.”
Per Ross’s December 2025 testimony, he began his military service in the Indiana National Guard, and deployed to Iraq as a machine gunner on a patrol truck from 2004 to 2005. After completing college, he joined the U.S. Border Patrol in 2007, working at a posting near El Paso, Texas.
“I did normal Border Patrol duties,” Ross testified, “including line-watch operations, tracking, and I also was a field intelligence agent.” In that role, he told the court he “compiled and analyzed information from raw information, creating an intelligence product and focusing more so on the cartels and drug smuggling and also alien smuggling.”
Ross transferred to ICE’s ERO division in 2015, where he works as a deportation officer focused on “higher-value targets” in the Twin Cities region. He also serves as a team leader on a joint anti-terrorism task force with the FBI; he testified that on a typical operation, he supervises two FBI agents and one agent from either the IRS or ATF.
“I develop the targets, create a target package, surveillance, and then develop a plan to execute the arrest warrant,” he testified, adding that he also holds a number of collateral assignments beyond routine deportation work.
“I am a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor,” he testified. “I'm also a field intelligence officer, and I am a member of the SWAT team, the St. Paul Special Response Team.”
Over his career, Ross told the court he has conducted hundreds of vehicle stops during enforcement actions, and described consistent patterns among people who attempt to flee arrest. “They do erratic behaviors,” he testified. “They take great risks, and they seem to not be aware of other people driving on the road. They usually—they make just extreme movements with their vehicles.”
Ross also claimed during the 2025 trial that immediately after he approached Muñoz-Guatemala, the man asked to speak to an attorney. But Eric Newmark, Muñoz-Guatemala’s defense counsel, noted that even the prosecution had never heard this claim before the trial. “I think he just made it up on the stand,” Newmark told the judge. “He never said it before. I think he said it for a particular reason” — allegedly to prove Muñoz-Guatemala knew he was being detained by law enforcement, not attacked by an unidentified carjacker. The lead prosecutor in the case conceded the unreported claim was “grounds for impeachment” against Ross, confirming that as far as the prosecution knew, Ross had never mentioned the attorney request before the trial.
During cross-examination by Newmark, Ross testified that many people he encounters during operations “act like they’re confused,” even when he believes they know full well he is a federal agent.
“I believe it's—it seems to be something that some people just—just say to—to stall,” he testified. “I believe a lot of time people are on the phone and they're waiting for people to get—to show up, especially with our line of work. They've got phone trees where they call and then protesters show up.”
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Updated 8:30 am ET, January 9, 2026: Added credit to The Intercept, which identified Ross after the Minnesota Star-Tribune and was the first outlet to report on a public Facebook photo captioned “Jon Ross in Iraq.”