FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: press@blmgrassroots.org
January 10, 2026
On New Year’s Eve, as the world thirsted for celebration, Black father, son, neighbor, and community member, #KeithPorter stepped outside his front door to celebrate. Like many around the nation, he fired his gun in the air to celebrate the coming of 2026. An ICE agent who lived in the same complex moved as if Keith was no more than a target in a game. He went inside his own unit, put on his tactical gear, grabbed his ICE-issued firearm, stepped back outside, and shot this Black man dead in front of his own home.
The only reports of Keith’s killing hailed the murderer as a “hero” and painted Keith as a “suspect” instead of the victim. Nowhere is it written that he was his mother’s only child and called to check in on her every single morning. It doesn’t talk about his stellar work record and the laughter that he brought to his coworkers at Home Depot. There are no mentions of him as a “girl dad,” who brings light to his 9-year-old’s eyes or that he couldn’t stop bragging about his 20-year-old, a standout college sophomore at the University of Texas. Keith was deeply loved in his Compton community and moved to Northridge “for love.”
Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles learned immediately about Keith’s death because he is the relative of one of our members. A community vigil was held two days after his murder. In the pouring rain, Keith’s spirit was lifted. What was made starkly clear is that ICE does not only terrorize migrants, it is a death sentence for African Americans, a warning that Black Lives Matter Grassroots issued back in June, at the start of the Los Angeles ICE raids. Less than a week after Keith’s murder, as we are ramping up the organizing for justice in his name, it was made clear that even white people are fodder for ICE violence.
By all accounts, #ReneeGood was a beautiful human…a mother, a poet, a singer, a community worker, a wife, and daughter…who lived up to her name. She was good. She did good work. She put herself on the line to advance goodness in the world. Even in photos, her eyes glimmer with goodness and love, the softness of her face just feels like good.
On January 7th, we all watched in horror as evil stole Renee from this world. She was murdered in cold blood by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was driving a car, complying with orders to move when the masked agent – who we now know to be Jonathan Ross – shot her three times in the head.
The Trump Administration immediately blamed Renee for her own death. Praising her killer as “brave,” condemning Renee as a “domestic terrorist.” Ross is the terrorist. ICE is a terrorist organization working at the behest of a fascist regime. Renee was doing what she could to provide some piece of safety in a community that is under siege by its own government.
Since the inception of Black Lives Matter, we have called on courageous white allies to put their lives on the line for Black people, people of color, and those who are most vulnerable to a policing system that descends from slave catching. In the spirit of John Brown and other fearless white allies before, Renee was willing to use her white privilege to protect people of color. This kind of solidarity scares the system of white-supremacist capitalism to no end. The message that ICE tried to send was for white people to stay home and stay out of it, Renee would want all of us to double down and continue the work that is important to her, showing up in solidarity. Black Lives Matter Twin Cities has been responding to increased ICE presence in their community since last year.
Both of these murders were committed by an agency that was chartered to advance white-supremacist colonial imperialist fascism. The already massive ICE budget was just increased by $170 billion, making it the largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the nation, placing it in the top 20 of military budgets globally, all while money was cut to essential services.
The murders of Keith Porter and Renee Good are especially jarring because both were both birthright citizens and supposedly out of the purview of ICE. And as we mourn and rage for them, we must also remember that ICE’s murderous presence has been levied on migrant communities since the inception of the agency. The theft of Keith and Renee’s lives represent the harm we feared and braced ourselves for when the ICE raids kicked into high gear in 2025, as articulated in our initial statement about the ICE raids and the necessary protests and uprisings to the ICE raids.
ICE violence continues to escalate. Two days after Renee’s murder, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol shot a husband and wife in Portland, Oregon. ICE has shot at least 14 people since last January, killing at least four people. 2025 represented the most deadly year on record in more than two decades, with at least four people shot and killed by ICE and 32 dying while in ICE custody. This does not include additional violence perpetrated by ICE in the numerous documented cases of brutality and the violence inherent in ripping apart families and facilities such as Alligator Alcatraz. This also does not include violence by ICE and police in the midst of protests.
The violence is more than data, it is real lives destroyed by a fascist regime. We mourn each of these murders and condemn them, not only in theory, but in practice by doubling down on our solidarity, organizing, and protest. Our only option is to resist everyday, in every way. We must look the monster straight in the face and fight it with every tool we have. The elected officials who protect and defend this violence through action and inaction are complicit, they too have blood on their hands. Police departments who tear gas, brutalize, and terrorize community alongside ICE are the devil we know, we expect nothing less of them, even in “Sanctuary Cities.” As unmasked fascists are brazen in their disregard for lives and communities, liberal mayors and governors talk out of both sides of their mouths, condemning Trump while being complicit with the violence and fascism of the regime.
The answer lies in our communities and in our solidarity. In the names of Keith Porter and Renee Good, we fight. We fight for a world where parents live to raise their children and they can realize the world that they imagined for them. Black Lives Matter Grassroots remains committed to this work as frontline organizers until we win full liberation for all of our people.
Black Lives Matter – California and each of the state’s eight chapters condemn the passage by the state legislature and signing into law by Governor Gavin Newsom of the unconstitutional and undemocratic bill AB 715 and its weak companion legislation, SB 48.
Leimert Park, Los Angeles – Black Lives Matter Grassroots now has fifty-two chapters, including three led by imprisoned folks and one in Stockholm, Sweden. The now-international organization, whose mission is to end state-sanctioned violence, convened this past weekend to celebrate twelve years since the founding of the birth of one of the largest racial justice movements in the history of the world and the very first Black Lives Matter chapter on this same spot, Leimert Park (aka Africa Town), the heart of Black Los Angeles. The organization was sprung into being after the murderer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was acquitted by a legal system that never served Black people.
“BLM Grassroots, Local Organizers, Justice Families, and Student Activists Warn of Alarming Trend of Black Students at Predominantly White Institutions BeingTargeted by White Supremacists and Cops.”
