Two-thirds of Americans now believe ICE has gone too far in its immigration enforcement operations, according to a PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll conducted January 27–30, 2026. That 65% figure is up sharply from 54% just seven months earlier, and the shift in public opinion coincides with an escalation that has produced a grim milestone: two U.S. citizens — Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 years old — were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis within a span of 17 days. Their deaths, both ruled homicides by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, have become flashpoints in a national debate over whether the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign has crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed.
The poll, which surveyed 1,462 U.S. adults with a margin of error of ±2.9 percentage points, reveals that the discontent is not confined to one political tribe. While 93% of Democrats say ICE has gone too far, 71% of independents agree — and even among Republicans, 27% now share that view, up from 20% in June 2025. This article examines the polling data in detail, reconstructs what happened to Good and Pretti, places their deaths in the broader context of federal enforcement violence, and explores what legal and political recourse may exist for citizens caught in the crossfire of immigration operations.
Table of Contents
- Why Do 65% of Americans Say ICE Has Gone Too Far in Immigration Enforcement?
- The Killing of Renée Nicole Good — What Happened on January 7?
- Alex Pretti — A Nurse Who Stepped Between an Agent and a Woman on the Ground
- Operation Metro Surge — How Federal Enforcement Escalated in Minneapolis
- Legal Rights and Limitations for Citizens Encountering Federal Agents
- The Polling Shift Among Republicans and What It Signals
- Where Does This Go From Here?
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Do 65% of Americans Say ICE Has Gone Too Far in Immigration Enforcement?
The numbers tell a story of accelerating public alarm. In June 2025, a slim majority — 54% — expressed concern about ICE overreach. By late January 2026, that figure had jumped 11 points to 65%. Meanwhile, the share of americans who consider ICE’s actions “about right” dropped from 26% to 22%, and those who think the agency hasn’t gone far enough fell from 18% to 12%. In raw terms, the country has moved decisively toward the conclusion that federal immigration enforcement is out of control. The partisan breakdown is revealing not for the expected Democratic opposition but for the cracks forming on the right. Republicans who say ICE has gone too far rose from 20% to 27% — more than one in four. A plurality of Republicans (45%) still consider enforcement actions “about right,” but that number represents a shrinking consensus.
Among independents, the group that typically decides elections, 71% now say ICE has overreached, up 12 points from 59%. When nearly three-quarters of the political center thinks your enforcement agency has a problem, that is not a messaging failure. It is a policy crisis. What changed between June 2025 and January 2026 is not abstract. It is measured in body counts. The American Immigration Council has documented at least 33 shootings by federal immigration agents since January 20, 2025, resulting in 9 deaths. At least 5 of those shot were U.S. citizens — people who had every legal right to be exactly where they were standing.
The Killing of Renée Nicole Good — What Happened on January 7?
Renée Nicole Good was a 37-year-old writer and poet from Colorado Springs who was living in Minneapolis with her partner and her 6-year-old child. On January 7, 2026, she was in her car when she encountered an ICE immigration enforcement operation. Her vehicle was stopped sideways in the street. According to available accounts, she briefly reversed, then moved forward and to the right. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots as her vehicle passed him, striking her fatally. The car was turning away from Ross when he pulled the trigger. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide. Good was a U.S.
citizen. She was not the target of the immigration operation. She was not suspected of any crime. She was in her car, in her city, on a public street, and a federal agent shot her three times. Her 6-year-old child lost a parent not to a foreign threat or a criminal act but to a bullet fired by an employee of the United States government during a routine enforcement sweep. However, if you are expecting this case to produce swift accountability, history suggests caution. Federal agents involved in shootings during enforcement operations are investigated internally, and the threshold for criminal prosecution of law enforcement officers remains extraordinarily high. The legal doctrine of qualified immunity continues to shield government agents from most civil liability unless their actions violate “clearly established” constitutional rights — a standard courts have interpreted so narrowly that it often functions as blanket protection.
Alex Pretti — A Nurse Who Stepped Between an Agent and a Woman on the Ground
Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis. On January 24, 2026 — just 17 days after Good’s death — he was on the street filming federal agents with his phone and helping to direct traffic during another enforcement operation. When he saw a federal agent push a woman to the ground, he stepped between them. For that act, agents pepper-sprayed him, and approximately six agents wrestled him to the ground. Two Customs and Border Protection officers then shot him multiple times. The county medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Pretti was not an activist by profession. He was a nurse, a person whose job was literally to keep people alive. He worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital, caring for the men and women who served the country that killed him. He saw someone being hurt and did what medical professionals are trained to do — he intervened. The fact that the people hurting her wore federal badges did not change his instinct, and it should not have changed his right to stand on a public street and bear witness. The Pretti case is particularly significant because it involved not ICE agents but CBP officers, expanding the scope of agencies implicated in lethal force against American citizens during immigration operations. CBP is the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, and its deployment in urban enforcement operations — far from any border — raises serious questions about mission creep and rules of engagement.
Operation Metro Surge — How Federal Enforcement Escalated in Minneapolis
Both killings occurred during Operation Metro Surge, an ICE enforcement operation targeting the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area that began in December 2025 and was later expanded statewide across Minnesota. Federal agents made more than 3,000 arrests during the operation, flooding a major American city with armed federal officers conducting immigration sweeps on residential streets, in parking lots, and near schools and workplaces. The tradeoff the administration made was explicit: aggressive, high-volume enforcement in exchange for public safety. But the results tell a different story. Two U.S. citizens are dead.
At least 33 shootings by federal immigration agents have occurred nationwide since January 20, 2025, with 9 fatalities. At least 5 of those shot were American citizens. Meanwhile, ICE custody itself has proven deadly — 32 people died in ICE detention in 2025, and at least 6 more died in early 2026, according to Al Jazeera’s reporting. The comparison to traditional policing is instructive. Local police departments, for all their well-documented problems, operate under civilian oversight boards, municipal accountability structures, and state licensing requirements. Federal agents deployed in operations like Metro Surge answer to a chain of command that terminates in Washington, not in the communities where they operate. When things go wrong — when a nurse is shot dead on a city street — there is no local chief of police to face the public, no city council to demand answers. There is only the federal bureaucracy and its well-practiced mechanisms of delay and deflection.
Legal Rights and Limitations for Citizens Encountering Federal Agents
If you are a U.S. citizen who encounters federal immigration agents, you have constitutional rights — but exercising them in the moment carries risks that the Good and Pretti cases make painfully clear. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to refuse consent to a search. You have the right to film law enforcement officers performing their duties in public spaces, a right affirmed by multiple federal circuit courts. Alex Pretti was exercising that right when he was killed. The limitation is brutal and simple: rights that exist on paper may not protect you from bullets in practice.
Federal agents operating under the pressure of large-scale enforcement operations, with expansive authorization and minimal local oversight, have demonstrated a willingness to use lethal force in situations that do not appear to meet any reasonable threshold. Renée Good was in a moving car. Alex Pretti was standing on a street with a phone. Neither posed a lethal threat to anyone, yet both were shot multiple times by agents of the federal government. For families of those killed, legal options include wrongful death lawsuits under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, though the Supreme Court has dramatically narrowed the availability of Bivens claims in recent years. Congressional inquiries and Department of Justice investigations remain possible avenues, but they require political will that may or may not materialize. President Trump himself acknowledged that the Good and Pretti killings “should not have happened,” a statement that falls short of accountability but at least concedes the fundamental point.
The Polling Shift Among Republicans and What It Signals
The most politically consequential number in the Marist poll may be the 27% of Republicans who now say ICE has gone too far. That figure is up from 20% in June 2025, a 7-point increase within the president’s own party. While 45% of Republicans still consider enforcement actions “about right,” the erosion is significant.
When more than a quarter of a president’s base begins to question a signature policy initiative, it typically signals that the issue has moved from abstract politics into personal experience — people know someone who was affected, or they have seen footage that disturbed them, or the body count has reached a number they cannot rationalize. This is especially notable because immigration enforcement has been the single most unifying issue for the Republican coalition since 2015. If the Trump administration is losing ground even here, it suggests that the operational reality of mass enforcement — the raids, the shootings, the dead citizens — is more politically costly than the rallies and executive orders ever anticipated.
Where Does This Go From Here?
The trajectory is unsustainable. Public opposition is growing across every demographic and political group. Two U.S. citizens are dead in a single city in a single month. Federal agents have been involved in at least 33 shootings in roughly a year.
ICE detention facilities continue to produce fatalities at alarming rates. And the polling suggests that the more the public sees of these operations, the less it approves. The question is whether the political system can convert 65% disapproval into meaningful policy change — new rules of engagement, independent oversight of federal enforcement operations, accountability for agents who use lethal force without justification — or whether these numbers will simply become another data point in the long, grim record of American enforcement excess. The families of Renée Good and Alex Pretti are not waiting for polls to shift. They are waiting for justice, and the distance between those two things has never felt larger.
Conclusion
The Marist poll’s finding that 65% of Americans believe ICE has gone too far is not an isolated data point. It is the public’s verdict on an enforcement regime that has killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, produced at least 33 shootings by federal agents nationwide, and resulted in dozens of deaths in ICE custody. The partisan breakdown — with opposition rising among Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike — suggests that the cost of aggressive enforcement is being felt far beyond the immigrant communities it targets. What happens next depends on whether institutions respond to what the public is clearly saying.
Courts will determine whether the families of Renée Good and Alex Pretti receive any measure of justice. Congress will decide whether to investigate or look away. And the administration will have to reckon with the fact that even the president has conceded these killings should not have happened. The 65% are not asking a complicated question. They are saying, plainly, that this has gone too far — and that two dead American citizens is the proof.
Frequently Asked Questions
What poll found that 65% of Americans say ICE has gone too far?
The PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll, conducted January 27–30, 2026, surveyed 1,462 U.S. adults by phone, text, and online. The margin of error is ±2.9 percentage points. The full results are available at the Marist Poll website.
Were Renée Good and Alex Pretti U.S. citizens?
Yes. Both were U.S. citizens, aged 37, living and working in Minneapolis. Neither was the target of an immigration enforcement operation. Both deaths were ruled homicides by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner.
What is Operation Metro Surge?
Operation Metro Surge is an ICE enforcement operation that began in December 2025, initially targeting the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area and later expanded statewide across Minnesota. Federal agents made more than 3,000 arrests during the operation.
How many people have been shot by federal immigration agents since January 2025?
According to the American Immigration Council, there have been at least 33 shootings by federal immigration agents since January 20, 2025, resulting in 9 deaths. At least 5 of those shot were U.S. citizens.
Did President Trump comment on the Minneapolis killings?
Yes. Trump stated that the killings of Good and Pretti “should not have happened,” though no specific policy changes or disciplinary actions have been publicly announced as a direct result of that statement.
What legal options do families of those killed by federal agents have?
Families may pursue wrongful death lawsuits under the Bivens doctrine, though the Supreme Court has significantly narrowed the scope of such claims in recent years. Congressional investigations and Department of Justice reviews are additional avenues, but they depend on political will and institutional follow-through.