She voted believing ICE would protect Americans; it killed her daughter instead, so her family is suing it.

…(cont) Except last Tuesday the gate didn't go up. I sat there with my blinker on, looking at the thing, waiting, and I thought — what exactly did I pay for, if the arm comes down anyway?

That question has been rattling around in my glovebox-brain ever since, because of a family in Minneapolis.

Donna Ganger is the mother of Renee Good. According to The Hill, on September 23rd, Ganger said two things, and I wrote them both down because I wanted to get them exact. The first is that she voted for Donald Trump. The second is that she thought federal immigration officers would, in her word, "protect" Americans.

I'm not saying those two things happened at the same moment. I don't have a receipt for that, and I don't like to guess at things I can't find in my own notebook. I only have the two sentences, filed on the same day, under the same name.

What I do have, from the same family's lawsuit, filed this week and reported by the BBC, is this: an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good. Her family's lawyers describe what the administration built there as "an unprecedented environment for state-sponsored violence."

Unprecedented is a big word, and I'm an old man who likes a number better than an adjective, so I went looking for one. Here's what I found, from The Intercept, dated September 19th: the charging decision pending in that city isn't about one shooting. It's about two — Renee Good, and a nurse named Alex Pretti, shot by immigration agents in January. In August, his family asked, on television, what he did to deserve it. I couldn't find anyone at the agency who has answered that one on the record, and I'm not going to answer it for them.

That gives me a count of two, not an adjective. I don't know yet if two makes a pattern or only makes two, but it's more than the word "unprecedented" was giving me by itself, so for now I'm sticking with the two.

Now, about my toll lane. I called the authority — this was a slow week for me — and asked what the transponder is actually buying a driver, if the gate can still come down on him. The woman on the phone was very patient. She said the system is "designed to protect the flow of traffic," and that occasionally there are "exceptions." I wrote that word down too. Exceptions.

I keep turning this over. She said she voted for Trump. She said, separately, that she believed immigration officers would protect Americans. Her family's lawsuit now names officials in that same administration, over the killing of her daughter by one of those same officers. I'm not going to tell you what to make of that — a man my age with a notebook this full learns to be careful about conclusions. I'll just ask: is the agency she said would protect Americans the same one her family is now suing?

Actually — hold on, one more thing before you head out. The lawsuit names the officials. The ballot named the man they answer to. Same family, same year, two different documents, and only one of them got her a lawyer.

Which one was supposed to keep her daughter safe?