Page T2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 2 October 2026
As it ran on the front
In January, ICE agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis nurse, in the street. In February, an ICE agent killed Renee Good in the same city. By August, Pretti's family was telling ABC News that officials had falsely described him as an assassin or a domestic terrorist. Twenty-five days later, on Sept. 19, The Intercept reported that both candidates running to be Minneapolis County Attorney — a former public defender and a former federal prosecutor — said they would get the charging decision on Pretti and Good right.
On Oct. 1, Good's family sued Tom Homan and other federal officials personally.…
…(cont) CBS News pressed Homan on that complaint twice this week. Earlier, he called Good's death tragic — the word for weather, for things that happen to no one in particular. Days later he went further and said he wished Good "was alive today." It is a softer line than tragic, and it answers nothing the suit actually asks. The complaint does not want to know whether Homan wishes Good were alive. It wants to know whether his agency built the conditions that got her killed. Asked twice in one week, Homan has used both answers to describe his own feelings and none of them to describe his agency's policy.
Underneath both non-answers sits the policy itself: ICE's vehicle pursuit ban, lifted after a fatal crash, reimposed, then lifted again — the second reversal in two months. The agency that cannot stop its agents from shooting people in Minneapolis also cannot stop its drivers from crashing into them in Michigan, and each time the fix has been to remove the rule rather than the gun or the wheel. Homan is being sued personally for building the environment. Asked about it twice in one week, he keeps describing the weather.
“They keep asking Homan what he built and he keeps telling you how he feels. The suit isn't about his feelings, it's about the agency he runs putting a nurse and a mother in the ground months apart in the same city. Softening the adjective doesn't answer the complaint — it just buys another news cycle before somebody has to say the word policy out loud.”
“Look, the border czar expressing genuine human emotion about a tragedy, that's leadership — wait, did I say tragedy, that's not supposed to be the word anymore. The man said he wished she was alive, that's compassion, that's not a legal position, why is everyone treating a condolence like a confession. ...I don't actually know why I'm defending the phrasing of a wish.”
Earlier in this story
The receipts
The UN torture rapporteur found direct-contact electric shock gloves "incompatible with the absolute prohibition of torture" - ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on them ABC10 San Diego / UN Special Rapporteur finding, August 2026
Renee Good: Family of US woman killed by ICE agent sues Trump officialsLawyers for Good's family say US officials created "an unprecedented environment for state sponsored violence" in Minneapolis.
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Tom Homan on fatal ICE shooting: "I wish Renee Good was alive today"Trump border czar Tom Homan speaks with CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez about February's fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good.
· Decision on Charging Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s Killers Looms Over Minneapolis DA Race from the morgue, 19 Sep 2026
· 'What Did He Do to Deserve to Be Murdered?' Alex Pretti's Family Speaks Out Months After Fatal ICE Shooting from the morgue, 25 Aug 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.