Renée Good’s brothers, others describe assaults, shootings at hearing

American citizens told congressional leaders Tuesday that they had been shot, manhandled and dragged from their cars by aggressive federal immigration enforcement agents in recent months, experiences that left them fearing for their lives.

The witnesses wept and spoke with emotion as they described violent encounters with federal agents at a forum on Capitol Hill sponsored by two Democrats. Some said they were protesting when they encountered immigration agents. Others told lawmakers they were innocent bystanders.

“I struggle every day with the pain and the suffering,” said Marimar Martinez, 30, who was shot five times by a federal agent after following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and blowing her car horn to warn neighbors of a potential raid in Chicago last fall. She was charged with assaulting the officer who shot her — but the charge was later dropped.

There was one moment, she recounted, that she looked down at blood streaming from poorly bandaged gunshot wounds and feared she might die.

“How many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?” she asked.

Luke and Brent Ganger — the brothers of Renée Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7 — were also moved to tears as they remembered their sister, whom they described as a poet with a sunny disposition who was devoted to her three children.

“The deep distress our family feels because of Renée’s loss in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress and desperation for change,” Luke said. He said that the family initially took consolation in the hopes that Renée’s death would bring about change in the country, but so far, “It has not.”

He added later: “These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours forever.”

Lawmakers called for a variety of actions, from requiring agents to remove their masks to defunding ICE altogether.

Immigration agents attempting to detain people living in the country illegally are “completely out of control,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), one of the lawmakers hosting the forum. “Congress has a responsibility to step in when constitutional rights are being violated.”

The Democratic-led forum on ICE tactics came on a day when lawmakers on Capitol Hill voted to end the partial government showdown and start negotiating new accountability measures for immigration enforcement — a deal Senate Democrats made with the White House after federal agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.

The Department of Homeland Security released data Tuesday showing that ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have experienced 182 vehicle attacks since the second Trump administration began, which the agency blamed on political rhetoric.

“Politicians are laying blame at the feet of law enforcement instead of looking in the mirror at how they have fueled the hatred and violent attacks we are seeing against federal law enforcement officers,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, describing what she called a “highly coordinated campaign of violence against our law enforcement.”

“Anybody who lays a hand on our officers or tries to obstruct or harm them is committing a felony and a federal crime,” she said.

In the furor and protests over Pretti’s death, the Trump administration tasked border czar Tom Homan with overseeing the deployment of 3,000 federal immigration officers that began in Minneapolis on Dec. 1.

Homan has said the federal government could shift forces to more “targeted” raids if they received sufficient cooperation from state and local officials. Advocates in Minneapolis have said that ICE raids have continued in their city, despite the cooling political rhetoric, and protests have continued.

Homan has vowed “zero tolerance” for those who obstruct the work of federal agents. At least 16 protesters in Minnesota have been arrested on charges of assaulting federal officers, the Department of Justice has said.

A report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released Tuesday alleged Pretti’s and Good’s deaths were the inevitable result of “increasingly aggressive — and frequently unlawful — tactics … documented across the country.”

Immigration agents have dragged people from their cars, tackled workers at their jobs, detained people on school grounds, unlawfully forced their way into homes without a judicial warrant and stopped people “without any apparent reason other than the color of their skin,” the report alleged.

On Tuesday, lawmakers also heard from Aliya Rahman, a traumatic brain injury survivor who said she was dragged from her car by agents in January, and Martin Daniel Rascon, who was shot at by agents in California in August.

Rahman, a Bangladeshi American software engineer, described becoming ensnared in a traffic jam of ICE vehicles while driving to a doctor’s appointment in Minneapolis on Jan. 13. Agents asked her to move her vehicle then shattered her car window and dragged her from the vehicle before taking her into custody, she said.

“I yelled, ‘I’m disabled,’” she said. “And the agent said, ‘Too late.’”

She said once she was taken to the Whipple Federal Building — where hundreds of immigrants have been detained — agents ignored her protestations that she had a brain injury. She repeatedly asked for medical care before finally blacking out. She was ultimately taken to a local hospital to be treated, she said.