Hundreds of people gathered in Alexandria yesterday (Sunday) to protest federal immigration enforcement, days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.
Demonstrators displayed anti-ICE signs and American flags along Mount Vernon Avenue at Four Mile Run Park Plaza, earning loud honks from passersby throughout the afternoon. They chanted “ICE Out For Good” while memorializing Renee Good, joining at least 1,000 similar protests nationwide by the organizing group Indivisible.
Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin joined the crowd for a rally alongside Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-5), the Rev. Robin Razzino and representatives from Tenants and Workers United, ICE Out of Alexandria, Grassroots Alexandria, Alexandria for Palestinian Human Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace.
“[Good] was a mom, a wife, and someone who cared deeply about her neighbors and her community,” Bennett-Parker said. “She was standing up for the people around her. Thank you all so much for coming. It is now more important than ever to stand up for our neighbors and our values, and to show that we will not let ICE terrorize us.”
An ICE officer fatally shot Good, 37, through the windshield of her moving car on Wednesday after firing his weapon three times, according to footage of the incident. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said that Good was trying to “ram” the officer who, she says, acted in self-defense — a claim disputed by Minneapolis leaders and other critics who point to footage showing that Good’s tires were turned away from the officer as, they say, she was attempting to drive away from him.
Further, Noem has described Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism” — a conclusion that has angered Minnesota policymakers who note that a federal investigation into the incident is still taking place.
Rousing chants for “shame,” Charlie, an organizer with Indivisible who declined to give a last name, said Noem’s words were defamatory and “insulting to our intelligence.”
“The entire Trump regime and Republican Party are defaming her, calling her a terrorist and a criminal, smearing her with misogyny and homophobia and trying to justify her murder at their hands,” Charlie said. “It’s evil and it’s hateful, and let’s be honest, too, it’s a little scary.”
Danika Hyssong, an Alexandria resident, told ALXnow she was concerned over the Minneapolis shooting as well as the recent shooting by U.S. Border Patrol in Portland, Oregon, that injured two people.
“I just keep thinking, in Nazi Germany, there’s a lot of Germans sitting there going, ‘Who voted for this jack—?’ you know, and sitting there,” Hyssong said. “So I was like, ‘You can’t sit on the sidelines. You have to at least do something.'”
Rallying the crowd, Levin was one of several speakers to express outrage for families who have been separated by deportations or experienced loss at the hands of ICE.
“Countless children all across the country have come home from day care, from school and found that their grown-up didn’t come home,” Levin said. “Countless more children are out there, worried that that’s going to happen to them next. My God, there’s a lot of evil out in the world right now, y’all — and there’s also a lot of good.”
Razzino, representing the Episcopal Church of St. Clement, said she has been “beset by rage and grief over and over and over again, over the last year.”
“I am tired of people asking clergy to stay away from politics,” she said. “I follow a God that cursed fig trees and flipped the tables of money changers; that came to bring good news to the oppressed; to bind up the brokenhearted; to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners; to comfort all who mourn.”
Speakers pointed out that 2025 was the deadliest year for ICE custody since 2004. Melissa, a local organizer who also did not give a last name, read the names of some of the 32 people who died in ICE custody last year “whose death we did not bear witness to.”
“If this is what they’re now willing to do to a young, white American woman while cameras film their actions from every angle, what do you think they’re doing when there are no cameras in sight?” Melissa said.
Melissa also called on protestors to challenge “local institutions and people in power upholding this terrorism and profiting from it.” She detailed activists’ months–long grievances with Sheriff Sean Casey and the office’s interactions with ICE, joining Bennett-Parker, who shared similar criticisms earlier in the rally.
“Here in Alexandria, if you are arrested and undocumented, ICE may be waiting to take you into custody when you leave jail, even if the charges were unfounded,” Bennett-Parker said. “Our sheriff continues this practice, even though our neighboring jurisdictions do not, because he believes state law requires it.”
In 2025, the sheriff’s office transferred 54 inmates to ICE custody, according to recently updated figures. This is the office’s highest annual transfer count since 2019, when 89 transfers were reported.
The office continues to maintain that it does not “collaborate” with the enforcement agency or hold inmates past their release dates. In November, City Council and Mayor Alyia Gaskins released a statement calling on Casey to cease “voluntary participation” with ICE.
“While we acknowledge our Sheriff’s Department is not participating in other active enforcement options available to them, we call upon the Sheriff to cease his transfer of persons in his custody in response to ICE administrative detainers and warrants,” they wrote in a joint statement.
Activists continue to call on City Council to hold a public hearing with the Sheriff’s Office, Melissa said.
