Hundreds of Philadelphians marched through Center City in two demonstrations that condemned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration’s military intervention in Venezuela. Both protests began outside City Hall and moved through cold and rain to the front of the Federal Detention Center for a rally.
The earlier protest was part of a series of coordinated “ICE Out For Good” actions in cities across the country responding to the death of Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday. An ICE agent shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother, during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Good’s death has sparked outrage and protests, including a Thursday night vigil outside City Hall that drew over 1,000 people.
Government officials including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner have called the shooting unlawful, based on videos recorded and shared by witnesses and the ICE agent himself. President Donald Trump and members of his administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, have said the agent was acting in self-defense and have characterized Good as a domestic terrorist.
The administration’s immigration policies have been upsetting for North Philadelphia residents Caitlyn Valentino and Sean Kearney. They said Good’s death and the government’s portrayal of the incident were a wakeup call to come out and protest Saturday.
“We all should have been out here, you know, for the past year of everything that’s been going on with ICE. But it is the blatant lying and gaslighting by the government that just, I think, made us all snap out of it and be like, ‘What the F?’ ” Valentino said. “We’re not going to let them call this woman a domestic terrorist. We’re not going to let them lie to our faces.”
The ICE protest was met by some counterprotesters along the way, as well as interactions with armed guards at the Federal Detention Center.
Ruchama Bilenky, who joined the ICE protest, said that the tense exchanges felt more perilous knowing that Good — and two other people in Portland, Oregon — were shot by federal agents this week.
“I like to think, ‘Oh, I’m out here as a little white woman, and nobody’s going to be afraid of me and decide to shoot me.’ But obviously, that’s not true anymore,” Bilenky said.
Protesters said they want to see accountability for the ICE agent. Some called for the removal of the Trump administration.
“Our thing is Trump must go now, and it’s a concise statement, but it means the entire regime, not just him,” said a protester who identified himself as Seth and a member of the group Refuse Facism. “We’re talking about Vance, we’re talking about [U.S. Attorney General Pam] Bondi, Noem, [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth, etc., etc. All of them. The whole regime.”
There should be “a truth and reconciliation process,” Kearney said. “We need the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. We need prosecution from the top to the bottom.”
Bilenky said that she planned on also attending the second protest, called a “Day of Action for Venezuela,” which was organized by a coalition including the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America, Juntos and the Philly Palestine Coalition.
Calls from the first protest to remove ICE from Philadelphia echoed through the later protest, which also decried the Trump administration’s military actions in Venezuela. Protesters also expressed support for Palestinians and called for an end to what they described as U.S. imperialism in other parts of the world.
The Venezuela protest followed last weekend’s operation in Caracas, where American forces captured and indicted President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores on drug and weapons charges. The action has sparked protests in Philadelphia and other cities.
