Page T2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 October 2026
As it ran on the front
In September, the question of who would be charged for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti had already become a campaign issue. The Intercept reported Sept. 19 that both candidates for Minneapolis County Attorney — a former public defender and a former federal prosecutor — said, in substance, that they would get the charging decision right. Neither has made it yet.
Four days later, Good's mother, Donna Ganger, told the Hill she had voted for Trump and expected federal agents to protect people like her daughter. She called it torture that she could not protect her from the agents she had voted to trust.…
…(cont) The next day, Michigan's governor ordered a state review of ICE's vehicle pursuits after one ended in a fatal crash. ICE's answer was to reverse its own pursuit ban — the second reversal of the same policy in two months, and the second time this year a death has forced the agency back to a rule it had already written once.
Yesterday, Good's family filed two lawsuits over her shooting in Minneapolis. The filings name multiple defendants, Homan among them, personally. They argue federal immigration enforcement has built "an unprecedented environment for state-sponsored violence" — the second fatal ICE encounter this year to force the identical pursuit-policy reversal, which is one way to measure how unprecedented "unprecedented" has become.
The same day, CBS News put the suit to Homan directly. His full answer, as CBS reported it: "What happened was tragic."
Tragic describes weather. It does not name a policy or a defendant. The suit names one — him. The agency's own paperwork names the same policy twice, written and rewritten inside two months. The quote does not mention the suit, or the environment it describes.
The two sentences ran in the same wire story, filed the same day. One is a legal claim against a government the family says was built for violence. The other is the word a named official used instead of answering it. They sit next to each other on the page. Nothing in either one refers to the other.
“This is the oldest trick in the book: call the policy problem a "tragedy," like it's weather, and nobody has to write a check or face a jury for it. Homan's a named defendant in a wrongful-death suit and the best he's got on camera is the word you'd use for a tornado. Watch what happens when the Minneapolis DA race actually has to charge somebody for pulling the trigger — that's the day the word stops working.”
“"Tragic" is just the compassionate word, it shows he takes it seriously — wait, why would taking it seriously be the defense here. He's not the one who pulled a trigger, he just runs the agency whose policy on pursuits has been rewritten twice in two months, which, okay, I should probably stop there.”
Earlier in this story
The receipts
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
White House border czar Tom Homan defends ICE arrests after Renee Good family lawsuitsWhite House border czar Tom Homan was asked about two lawsuits filed by family members of slain anti-ICE protester Renee Good in an interview with CBS News. CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
Border Czar Tom Homan was asked about the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good amid news that Good's family had filed civil lawsuits against several people, including Homan, for her death. CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez has more.
· Decision on Charging Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s Killers Looms Over Minneapolis DA Race from the morgue, 19 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.