Usually when a government agency is caught up in a major public scandal, its employees and officials lay low, show some contrition as they carry out damage control, and stay on their best behavior until it blows over. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal deportation forces are not acting like a typical government agency.

Few government agencies have faced the kind of public relations crisis that ICE plunged itself into last week, after an agent killed an unarmed mother in Minneapolis, Renee Good, who was driving away from him, in what polling shows most Americans view as an unjustified shooting. ICE and other deportation forces were already embroiled in nationwide outrage over a year’s worth of shockingly lawless, heavy-handed, and often violent behavior, which had seen them illegally detain countless US citizens, shoot a US citizen woman five times and brag about it, and take the life of an immigrant man for injuries the agent himself admitted were “nothing major.”

But shooting an unarmed US citizen who posed no threat in cold blood — before calling her a “f — ing b — ” and blocking medical aid from reaching her as she died — is on a level beyond even this.