1,000 formed a half-mile procession through Concord for ICE victims.

We remembered Renee Nicole Good and demanded “ICE Out!”

Wednesday, January 7th, an American citizen and mother of three young children was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota without justification. Trump administration officials including Kristi Noem, J.D. Vance, and Trump himself blatantly lied about the event to defend the killer and paint the victim as a terrorist.

This evil act, and the administration doubling down on it, fits a broader pattern of unchecked violence, impunity, and abuse carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against members of our communities.

1,000 showed up to protest this clear manifestation of authoritarianism!

CI steering committee member Diane Proctor addressed the crowd before we processed:

Today, January 10, marks the date, 250 years ago, when Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was first published. Within days it required reprinting, after 120,000 had sold. Paine wrote, in his spare 47-page pamphlet, that in a free republic, no person is above the law: saying, “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

We gather, this afternoon, in memory of Renee Nicole Good, who was senselessly shot and killed by ICE in Minnesota—6 blocks from where George Floyd was killed—on January 7th. It is common sense that our government should be mourning for the three children she left behind.

She is not the only person to be deprived of life in ICE custody. Thirty-two people have died, some of seizures and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died at ICE detention centers and field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals, but were still under ICE custody. In some cases, their families and lawyers have alleged, they died of neglect, after repeatedly trying and failing to get medical care.

They were parents, grandparents, newly arrived to our country and residents for many years; they held jobs, worked hard, and wanted to be Americans. As one wife wrote: “We had just bought our first home together, and he worked hard every single day to make sure our children had what they needed. His death is a senseless tragedy that has left our family shattered,” “I do not know how to explain to our children that their father is gone.”

Another wife wrote, “My husband was man who lived here for 30 years, worked hard, paid taxes – and they treated him like an animal. They treated him as if he were a murderer.” She learned of his death on 16 December, the day of the couple’s eighth wedding anniversary.

Supporters wrote of another senseless death, “We miss his teachings, his knowledge. We crave him for our own sake, not just for him. He’s an actively good man; he spent his life selflessly caring for others, nurturing our children with the wisdom of the Qur’an, healing family rifts, and offering kindness to everyone he met. His boundless generosity touched countless souls, and the space he leaves behind feels immeasurably quiet and deep.”

This a mere sampling of the stories of the 32 who were martyred in the last year. Indeed, in mid-December, the agency was holding 68,440 people in detention; nearly 75% of them had no criminal convictions. We can only pray that they will be safe.

Renee Nicole Goode was a poet, so I share these words written in her memory by Amanda Gorman, a powerful American poet:

“For Renee Nicole Good Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026.”

by Amanda Gorman

They say she is no more,
That there her absence roars,
Blood-blown like a rose.
Iced wheels flinched & froze.
Now, bare riot of candles,
Dark fury of flowers,
Pure howling of hymns.
If for us she arose,
Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief,
Crouches our power,
The howl where we begin,
Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater
Of the worst of what we’ve been.
Change is only possible,
& all the greater,
When the labour
& bitter anger of our neighbors
Is moved by the love
& better angels of our nature.
What they call death & void,
We know is breath & voice;
In the end, gorgeously,
Endures our enormity.
You could believe departed to be the dawn
When the blank night has so long stood.
But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone,
When they forever are so fiercely Good.