Twenty years later, Ross, now an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is once again on the front lines of a polarising mission: the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
On January 7, during an enforcement surge in south Minneapolis, Ross fired three shots into a moving SUV, killing Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother-of-three.
Her partner, Becca, who recorded the standoff on her phone, later said the couple had “stopped to support our neighbours” after federal agents were spotted in their suburb.
US President Donald Trump and other federal officials have said that Ross acted in self-defence when he killed Good and have accused her of driving at him or even running him over.
Minnesota officials have called the Administration’s accounts “propaganda” and “garbage”.
A New York Times analysis of videos of the shooting contradicts the claim that Ross was run over and suggests Good was steering away from him at the time he opened fire.
Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, has said he is representing Ross. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The career trajectory of Ross from the National Guard to the Border Patrol, and finally to a tactical Ice unit, mirrors a broader, post-9/11 project: the steady militarisation of the border and the agencies that police it.
Gunner in Iraq
Ross joined the Indiana National Guard in 2002, a year after graduating from high school in Peoria, Illinois.
In November 2004, he deployed to Iraq, and was there for a year, during a time when the insurgency was growing increasingly violent.
He served as a gunner in convoys for his logistics unit, but nothing in his record suggests he saw combat.
Days before he deployed, Ross married for the first time. By the time he returned from Iraq, he had filed for divorce.
According to records, the couple had no children or real estate to divide; the final decree simply required his ex-wife to return her engagement and wedding rings and Ross to pay her US$3000.
He spent the next two years at Anderson University, a Christian liberal arts college in Indiana.
Michael Smith, a former dormmate, remembered Ross as a quiet, dependable student who didn’t participate in the campus party scene.
“He was a little more mature than the rest of us,” Smith said. He said Ross rarely discussed his time in Iraq.
US Border Guard
Ross graduated in 2007 with a degree in both business administration and psychology.
That year, he left the Indiana National Guard to join the US Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas.
He joined as the agency was racing to meet a Bush administration mandate to expand the force by the end of 2008 — effectively doubling its size compared to the start of the administration.
As a result of the push, many veterans joined, said Tony Payan, the director of the Centre for the US and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
He said it was tough for many of the veterans to go from a military mindset to one of law enforcement.
“It is very difficult for those trained to interpret threats in war zones to pivot to a role where they must view a person as a community member,” Payan said.
Critics have pointed to the mid-2000s hiring wave as a turning point for the agency’s culture.
A 2013 American Immigration Council report on the use-of-force policies of US Customs and Border Protection found an “organisational subculture” that fostered a “systematic problem” of mistreatment of migrants while in custody.
A 2013 policy review commissioned by the agency and conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum urged the agency to make significant changes.
Shooting at vehicles
It specifically recommended prohibiting agents from shooting at moving vehicles unless the occupants were attempting to use deadly force other than the vehicle against the agent.
In a statement, US Customs and Border Protection said it has “always prided itself in the training of its officers and agents and at no point has the integrity or quality of the training been compromised”.
Carl Quaney, who served as a Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2010 as part of the El Paso Sector, described the mission of the agency as a vital defence against narcotics and international terrorists.
He said he remembered Ross from his time there but that they didn’t work together.
As a former member of the Marine Corps who had deployed to Iraq, Quaney said the assets and support available at the Border Patrol made the job feel “like being back in the military again”.
When Ross arrived at the El Paso sector, it was relatively quiet, despite a drug cartel war taking place across the Rio Grande in Juarez, Mexico, some experts said.
Ross said in a 2025 court case that his duties included standard line-watch and tracking.
He also worked as a field intelligence agent, analysing raw data to map cartel operations and the mechanics of human and drug smuggling.
Minnesota Ice agent
By 2015, he had married again and taken a job with Ice in Minnesota.
That year, Ross bought a large home near the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Chaska, a city about 30 minutes southwest of where the shooting took place in Minneapolis.
One neighbour who declined to give his name out of fear of retribution said that the house had signage supporting Trump around the presidential election, and that a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag had waved from the front porch.
He said he had seen children playing on the front lawn.
As a team leader for Ice Enforcement and Removal Operations in St Paul, Ross focused on “fugitive operations” to track and apprehend “higher-value targets” he later said in court testimony.
He described co-ordinating with the FBI and ATF to oversee the surveillance and execution of arrest warrants.
He said he was also a firearms instructor and investigated transnational organised crime and national security cases.
Special Response Team
Ross was also part of a cohort inside Ice known as the Special Response Team that is trained to handle more dangerous situations.
In 2025, SRT members were sent across the US to cities where Trump’s immigration crackdown had spurred mass protests, including Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.
One law enforcement officer who has worked with Ross described him as a thorough agent who would go down rabbit holes in search of undocumented immigrants.
Ross mostly avoided bringing up politics in his workplace, said the colleague, who requested anonymity to protect himself from retribution.
The agency was dealing with a huge amount of burnout, the law enforcement officer said.
Across the US, Ice officers were being pushed to conduct more arrests and operations than ever before to hit lofty arrest goals dictated from Washington, DC.
Dragged by driver
In June 2025, Ross led a multiagency team to arrest a Guatemalan man who had been convicted of sexual abuse in Minnesota.
After a pursuit, the driver, Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala, had refused to exit his vehicle, prompting Ross to shatter a window, according to a federal affidavit which stated he was then dragged nearly 90m at high speeds after reaching into the man’s car.
Ross later testified that he “feared for his life” during the incident and suffered a severe forearm gash and required 33 stitches across his face and limbs.
Use-of-force experts told the New York Times that by reaching into the vehicle, Ross had disregarded standard law enforcement training.
Last month, a jury convicted Munoz-Guatemala of assaulting Ross.
Six months later, the dragging incident has become a key point in the national debate surrounding the shooting of Good.
For some of his supporters, including top Administration officials, it explains his lethal response to Good as a defensive reflex.
“The officer was in fear of his own life, the lives of his fellow officers and acted in self-defence,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.
She said that Ice officers are trained to use the “minimum amount of force necessary” to resolve dangerous situations, and that the agency prioritises public and officer safety through “de-escalation tactics” and regular, ongoing use-of-force training.
To Ross’ critics, however, the incident is evidence of a high-risk approach that favours counterinsurgency-style aggression over careful policing.
In court last December regarding the dragging case, Ross testified that he was dragged while screaming “at the top of my lungs” for Munoz-Guatemala to slow down.
On January 7, when Good began to drive instead of getting out of her SUV as ordered by Ice agents, Ross, who was bracing himself against her vehicle with one arm, fired three times, killing her.
On footage from Ross’ own cellphone, there are no pleas for the car to stop.
Instead, the video shows the car careening down the street. Ross can be heard muttering, according to a New York Times audio and video analysis, “F***ing b***h”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Katie J.M. Baker
Photographs by: US District Court for the District of Minnesota, David Guttenfelder
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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