Donna Ganger believed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown would make her family safer.
She was a registered Republican. She voted for Trump in 2024. And she says she did so believing that federal immigration agents would protect American citizens from dangerous threats.
Then, on January 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed her daughter, Renee Nicole Good.
Good was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three living in Minneapolis. She was shot while behind the wheel of her vehicle during an encounter with federal immigration agents amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.
Eight months later, her mother is publicly confronting the painful contradiction between what she believed she was voting for and what happened to her family.
Speaking Tuesday at a public forum involving families of people killed during federal immigration enforcement operations, Ganger revealed that she had voted for Trump specifically because she believed his policies would protect Americans.
“I’m a registered Republican,” Ganger said. “I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States.”
She said she believed that meant protecting innocent Americans from terrorists — not treating people like her daughter as threats.
“This is madness,” she said.
A Mother Demands Accountability
Ganger’s remarks were not simply a declaration of regret over a presidential vote. They were a grieving mother’s demand for accountability after the federal government she trusted became responsible for her daughter’s death.
Good was not an undocumented immigrant.
She was an American citizen.
Contemporaneous reporting found no criminal record beyond minor traffic matters. Friends and relatives described her as a mother, writer and poet. Her family described her as compassionate and deeply devoted to her children.
The circumstances surrounding her shooting became the subject of intense dispute.
Trump administration officials portrayed Good as a threat to federal officers and defended the shooting as an act of self-defense. State and local officials challenged that characterization, while videos of the encounter fueled further questions about the use of deadly force.
Good’s death was followed weeks later by another fatal shooting involving federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis, intensifying scrutiny of the operation.
For Ganger, however, the debate is no longer abstract.
It is about her daughter.
“It is our instinct and our honor to protect our children,” she told the forum.
She then described the anguish of being unable to protect Renee herself.
A Family Divided by Politics — But Not by Love
Ganger also resisted reducing her family to a partisan stereotype.
She described them as a “very American blend” whose members vote differently but still love one another deeply.
That detail makes her testimony particularly striking.
She did not describe herself as someone who had always opposed Trump’s immigration policies. She described herself as someone who supported Trump because she believed those policies would provide security.
Her experience changed the meaning of that promise in the most personal way imaginable.
Ganger said her Christian faith teaches forgiveness, but she made clear that forgiveness does not eliminate the need for accountability.
“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” she said.
“We need action. We need accountability.”
For Donna Ganger, those words come after a political promise she once trusted collided with the loss of her daughter.