Worried About ICE Violence Reaching Massachusetts, AG Campbell Backs Minnesota Probe into Renee Good’s Death

BY ELLA ADAMS

Amid concerns over federal immigration actions in other states, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said she is in “direct contact” with attorneys general in Minnesota and Illinois about accountability for the federal government.

“I’m continuing to stay in contact with them, to support them and how we hold ICE and federal administration officials accountable. It is not easy for us to do, but we are all on the same page that accountability is necessary,” Campbell said on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” Tuesday. “I also hope we do not see what we’re seeing in Illinois right now, in Oregon and Minnesota, here in Massachusetts.”

Federal agents reportedly shot and injured two people in Portland, Oregon on Jan. 8, a day after an ICE officer in Minnesota shot and killed a civilian named Renee Good while she was in her car, following a brief confrontation. Protests have intensified across the country in response to ICE’s actions. 

“Sadly, the agency that is responsible for holding these officials accountable for what we’re seeing, these egregious attacks, is your U.S. attorney’s office — is the federal administration,” Campbell said. Her office doesn’t have “a real working relationship” with that office, she said, though she’d like one. 

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul filed a federal suit against the Trump administration asking a court to end “the unprecedented surge of DHS agents into the state and declare it unconstitutional and unlawful.” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul also filed a suit alleging that the Trump administration “has overseen unlawful actions, abusive enforcement tactics, and repeated rights violations committed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during their militarized immigration campaign in Chicago,” according to the city, which joined the suit. 

“We’re tracking this, we’re telling folks, if they are seeing things in Massachusetts, to report to our office,” Campbell said. “We are also, of course, staying in contact with law enforcement and so many others, doing rapid response for folks who are unlawfully detained — and there have been people that are unlawfully detained.” 

Asked about her response to the shooting of Good, Campbell said, “For me, it’s almost like this was going to happen at some point.”

“Every time I’ve come on the radio, folks have asked — including in-person and community — how do we hold these officials accountable for the egregious posture, and the aggressive posture they are doing in our communities?” Campbell said. 

“When I saw that video, I ached like everyone else,” she continued. “I was even more angered by the response of the president, and also by the vice president, that would suggest that that woman, who was a U.S. citizen, going to just drop off a child, brought that death on herself.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said during an interview with CNN that the officer who shot Good “acted on his training and defended himself and his life and his fellow colleagues.”

“It’s a tragedy that this family has lost a loved one, and that our country is dealing with the situation, but that’s why we need our leaders to turn down their rhetoric. We need individuals and elected leaders in Minnesota to start partnering with us so that we can do law enforcement operations on the streets to protect the citizens who live there,” Noem said. 

Campbell said that Good’s death “could be murder” based on the video posted online of the shooting, and that she supports Ellison’s investigation into the matter “even though the feds and the FBI are cutting him out.” She called for the federal investigation to be collaborative.

“All of these democratic AGs, as we do our jobs, there are targets on our backs, and we need the people to be with us,” Campbell said. “At the end of the day, everyone should be concerned. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, independent, or you’re not registered at all with anything — this country looks very different now than it did before this Trump administration. They are sowing fear. They are killing U.S. citizens. They just kidnapped a president, or leader, in Venezuela for oil.”

Campbell also briefly commented on the ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case expected to determine whether states can ban transgender athletes from participating on women’s sports teams. She said she supports trans women being able to participate in women’s sports.

Tuesday afternoon reporting from Reuters suggested that conservative justices were leaning toward allowing transgender sports bans after hearing hours of arguments. 

The Trump administration in December announced moves to essentially ban gender-affirming care for transgender young people, according to NPR reporting. A President Trump executive order introduced in January 2025 states that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another.”

“Frankly, it’s really hard to swallow that on the backs of trans youth right now — including some right here in Massachusetts that are taking their own life because of the environment in which they are being threatened every single day — that we would have an administration and people blaming them every single day for the problems of this state and the problem of America,” Campbell added. “And most of them are kids. Unacceptable, as far as I’m concerned.”