Guest host Kalonji Changa leads a powerful and urgent edition of Hard Knock Radio, examining the killing of Renee Nicole Good and the broader systems of state violence, media distortion, and unaccountable power that shape immigration enforcement in the United States.
In the first half of the show, Kalonji speaks with Emmy Award–winning journalist Georgia Fort, founder and independent reporter whose work focuses on social justice, media equity, and narrative accountability. Fort provides critical reporting and context on the January 7 killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old widow and mother who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis while serving as a legal observer monitoring ICE operations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has publicly defended the agent, claiming Ms. Good attempted to use her vehicle as a weapon. However, state and local officials—including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—have disputed that account, with Frey calling the use of deadly force reckless and unjustified. Independent video footage contradicts early mainstream media framing, showing the agent firing into Ms. Good’s vehicle while not in imminent danger. Fort breaks down how media narratives were shaped in real time, whose voices were amplified or silenced, and what the video evidence reveals.
In the second half of the program, Kalonji is joined by Nana Gyamfi, human rights and criminal defense attorney, Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)—the nation’s largest Black-led immigrant justice organization—professor of Pan African Studies at Cal State LA, radio host, and President of the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
Drawing on more than three decades of movement and legal experience, Gyamfi situates the killing of Renee Nicole Good within a broader legal and political framework, challenging the notion that ICE operates differently from other U.S. law enforcement agencies. She interrogates ICE as an institution wielding expansive power with limited accountability, and exposes how routine contact with police—often for non-criminal matters—can place individuals on a direct path toward detention and deportation.
The conversation examines systemic issues including ICE detentions carried out without due process, family separation, and the racialized impact of immigration enforcement. While Black immigrants make up approximately 8 percent of the U.S. immigrant population, they account for nearly 20 percent of those facing deportation. Gyamfi emphasizes that these harms are not limited to one administration, but are embedded in long-standing U.S. immigration policy that treats deportation as a civil—not criminal—process, allowing the state to detain and remove people without the protections afforded in the criminal legal system.
Gyamfi further explains how immigration enforcement disproportionately targets Black immigrants—particularly African and Caribbean nationals—as well as Black Americans and Latinx communities, while largely avoiding aggressive operations in cities with sizable European immigrant populations. She notes the lack of media scrutiny or visible ICE crackdowns in places like Sacramento, California, and other regions with historically significant Ukrainian communities, underscoring how immigration enforcement is selective, racially skewed, and fundamentally unjust, despite being framed as neutral or universally applied.
She points to the federal indictment of Congresswoman LaMonica McIver (D–NJ) in June 2025, who was charged with interfering with federal officers during an oversight visit to a Newark immigration detention facility. The incident occurred amid heightened tensions as Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was being arrested. While the Department of Justice claims McIver “forcibly” impeded officers during the chaotic May 2025 encounter, McIver maintains that the charges are politically motivated retaliation for her advocacy and oversight work.
Gyamfi examines how anti-Blackness manifests behind the walls of ICE detention facilities, which she characterizes as sites of torture due to their lack of meaningful oversight and accountability. She emphasizes that Black detainees—including U.S. citizens—are routinely denied adequate medical care, with some dying in custody as a result. She cites the case of Rodney Taylor, a Liberian-born man who is a double amputee and missing three fingers on one hand, whose health has severely deteriorated since being detained by ICE at Georgia’s Stewart Immigration Detention Center.
Ultimately, Gyamfi situates immigration enforcement within broader systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and empire, arguing that fear-based political rhetoric and dehumanizing narratives are deliberately deployed to justify extraction, dispossession, and state violence.
This episode challenges listeners to look beyond official statements and media spin, and to confront the deadly realities of domestic enforcement policies that continue to cost lives.
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.