Eric Swalwell was certain: “I saw a murder.”
The Democratic representative from California had just watched a video of an ICE officer shooting a woman dead in her car.
Standing on the House steps after a vote 57 minutes later, Republican Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska watched the same footage.
He said he could not be sure of what he saw. “I couldn’t really see what was happening there,” Flood said.
When a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renée Good in her Honda Pilot on Wednesday in Minneapolis, bystanders were filming from several angles. So was the ICE officer, who held a phone in one hand and a gun in the other. Video taken before, during and after the gunshots has become ubiquitous online in the days since Good was killed.
Many Democrats have condemned the ICE officer, who has not been charged with a crime. Some are calling for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. The Trump administration has blamed Good: President Donald Trump said she “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer,” though none of the videos show Good running him over. Vice President JD Vance said Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.” Noem accused Good of trying to run over the officers and called her actions “an act of domestic terrorism.” Many Republicans have echoed the administration’s claims, while other have been more circumspect.
Like their representatives, Americans are divided on Trump’s immigration crackdown and the surge of federal law enforcement, which has mostly targeted blue cities such as Minneapolis. A YouGov poll published the same day Good was killed found 52 percent of Americans disapprove of how ICE is doing its job, while 39 percent approve.
On Capitol Hill, a day after the shooting, two congressmen watching the same video clip came to different conclusions. But they also noticed different details, appearing to have different perceptions of what they were seeing on the screen in front of them.
Seated in his office Thursday, Swalwell squared his right arm across the table in front of him. Behind him, boxing gloves dangled on the wall. He shifted in his seat as he watched.
In the video, two ICE officer approached Good in her SUV. Good started to drive. “No! No! Shame!” screamed a bystander. Then, the officer pulled the trigger: three shots. “SHAME!” the bystander yelled.
Swalwell winced and shook his head.
The vehicle careened down the street and crashed into another car, amid more screams, yelling and cursing.
Swalwell sighed. What did he see?
“I see a mother,” Swalwell said. “I see a bunch of masked, mother-murdering thugs who have drawn the foul.”
He said he saw Good turn the wheel. He observed, too, what he believed the officer could see. “Everyone knows he can see her turn the wheels away from his direction,” Swalwell said. “I can see a mom in a car trying to turn away from an officer at a low speed and this monster just shooting into the vehicle.”
Swalwell said he saw an unarmed woman turning her car away from the officer — not striking him. He saw the officer move out of the way.
He said he saw onlookers in the snow, seeking to bear witness to other atrocities, but never expecting this one.
“I’ve looked at crime scene evidence like this hundreds of times,” said Swalwell, a former prosecutor who comes from a family of police offers. “The crime was committed by the ICE agent.”
On the House steps an hour later, Flood pushed his glasses onto his forehead and squinted at the iPhone in his hand. He pressed play.
“No! No! Shame!”
Flood studied the screen, then flinched.
Flood paused the video and rewound to watch again.
“It’s really hard for me to see from this angle,” Flood said. He said he had watched clips from other angles. In this one, he said, he couldn’t really see the officer. After reviewing the video again, he said he couldn’t make out what was happening.
“Hopefully when the dust settles, the facts will be out there,” Flood said. “But I don’t think Americans can make a decision on a video as to what happened here.”
Flood said he did not take issue with Trump and Noem’s claims that Good ran over the officer, a description not supported by the video.
“The secretary has access to a lot more evidence and facts than I do,” Flood said. “When someone’s enforcing the law and there’s a motor vehicle coming at them, and it’s a tense environment … This is a cantankerous, difficult, emotional situation.”
Investigative training, video footage from other angles and conversations with witnesses would put him in a better position to say exactly what happened and whether it was right or wrong, he said.
Video filmed by the ICE officer that surfaced Friday did not show Flood anything that changed his view, he said. “This new video seems to show that the ICE officer was threatened. This case is yet another example of how everyone needs to be careful not to jump to conclusions. Details take time to emerge and I’m glad more footage was released,” Flood wrote in response to a follow-up on whether the new video had changed his perspective.
The video didn’t change Swalwell’s mind either. “It only showed us what [Good’s] kind voice sounded like. She was called Good and she was being a good citizen. He showed himself to be a mother murdering monster,” Swalwell wrote.
What Swalwell saw was unambiguous, he said.
“To me, people who are trying to rewrite what happened, this is the same crowd that has tried to rewrite what happened on January 6th — but you can’t,” Swalwell said.
“We watched it with our own eyes.”
The post Two congressmen watched an ICE shooting video. Only one is sure of what he saw. appeared first on Washington Post.
