LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian police arrested the country’s top prosecutor and 13 others accused of protecting drug traffickers, the government said Thursday, days after the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions on the attorney general and several senior officials over corruption allegations.
The arrest of Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca, appointed to a six-year term in 2024 under Bolivia’s previous socialist government, comes as conservative President Rodrigo Paz deepens security cooperation with Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed the arrests as “bold and decisive actions to combat narco-trafficking, systemic corruption, and transnational organized crime in Bolivia.”
Mariaca did not immediately comment on his arrest but had earlier denounced U.S. accusations that he accepted bribes to facilitate drug trafficking as political pressure on his office. Anti-drug prosecutor Miguel Gonzales said late Wednesday that police had detained Mariaca without a warrant.
“We have dismantled a criminal organization entrenched in the justice system,” Interior Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters Thursday, adding that Mariaca would face charges of money laundering and drug trafficking.
Authorities detained but swiftly released suspected Uruguayan drug kingpin Sebastián Marset in 2023, when Mariaca was chief prosecutor in the eastern region of Santa Cruz, Oviedo said. “They let him go, and not only that, they returned his seized assets,” he said of the longtime fugitive trafficker. Marset was ultimately captured in Bolivia last March and sent to the U.S. to face money laundering charges.
Oviedo also alleged that bundles of cash seized from an ambulance leaving Mariaca’s home in the city of Santa Cruz early Thursday were proceeds of extortion targeting people who sought help from prosecutors. Prosecutor Daniel Ortuño said officers found 3.53 million bolivianos (about $294,000) and an additional $10,000 in the vehicle.
The other detainees included two prosecutors also targeted by this week’s U.S. visa sanctions, part of a broader round of travel bans affecting over a dozen officials across South America.
The State Department cast Monday's measures as support for the Shield of the Americas, the Trump administration's security alliance with mostly conservative governments in the region, including Bolivia, to fight organized crime. The restrictions marked the latest instance of Washington using U.S. visas to pressure critics and officials whose actions conflict with its priorities in Latin America.
Urging lawmakers to overhaul the justice system, Oviedo warned officials against cooperating with criminal groups.
“Either you stand with the law ... or you stand with crime, with narcoterrorism,” he said.
Paz took office last November, ending nearly two decades of dominance by the Movement Toward Socialism party of former President Evo Morales. He has warmed ties with Washington and resumed cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which Morales expelled along with the U.S. ambassador in 2008, accusing them of seeking to overthrow his government.
Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo arrives to give a news conference on the detention of Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca in La Paz, Bolivia, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo gives a news conference on the detention of Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca in La Paz, Bolivia, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Renee Good's family sued the U.S. government and the architects of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown on Thursday, saying “the time is absolutely now for accountability” after her killing in January by a federal agent in Minneapolis.
Good’s partner, Becca Good, and brother, Brent Ganger, accused the government and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot into her SUV and killed her, Jonathan Ross, of unjustified and excessive use of force.
The Jan. 7 shooting, captured on bystander video, was “the predictable and intended product” of the Trump administration’s crackdown on Somali and other immigrants in Minnesota, an exercise that officials dubbed Operation Metro Surge, the lawsuit said.
“She was the love of my life,” Becca Good said at a news conference announcing the lawsuits. “I’m here today because last January, the whole world had to watch as our entire universe was destroyed — as the sunshine who was my amazing Renee was robbed from us, from her children, and from her community.”
The killings of Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and another U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis just weeks later sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement. At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration officers during Trump’s second term.
The crackdown, a pillar of Trump’s second term, has prompted a slew of lawsuits filed by everyone from Chicago-area pastors to more than a dozen states and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested, but few have been convicted of any crimes.
“What happened to Rene was completely senseless,” Ganger said. “And the fact that there’s been no accountability, no investigation, no expression of condolence, no change in policy is completely mind blowing.”
“The hole in my family and myself created by my sister’s passing is hauntingly apparent,” he added.
The lawsuits — one against the government, the other against Ross and officials including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House border czar Tom Homan — seek unspecified damages for wrongful death, conspiracy and other violations.
“Our government has become a grave and mortal threat to its own citizens,” the family’s lawyer, Antonio Romanucci said.
The Justice Department has not responded to an email seeking comment.
Renee Good was killed while driving home with Becca on a street where masked federal immigration officers were conducting an enforcement operation, the lawsuits said. They had just dropped their six-year-old son off at school,
Renee stopped their SUV in the street and honked her horn to warn people about the operation while Becca got out and started recording video with her cellphone, the lawsuit said.
Bystander video shows Renee Good in the driver’s seat of a red SUV blocking part of the road and repeatedly honking her horn. Two immigration officers get out of a truck, their faces covered, and one orders Good to get out of the car. She reverses briefly, then turns the steering wheel as the officer says again, “get out of the car.”
Almost simultaneously, Becca Good, standing in the street, shouts: “Drive, baby, drive!”
One officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and fires into the windshield. He lurches back as the car turns away from him. The officer, who is now very close to the open window on the driver’s side, fires two more times, fatally shooting Renee Good, according to an analysis of the videos by The Associated Press and others.
Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defense and that Good had engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Becca and Renee Good were not legally married, according to a family lawyer, but referred to one another as wives. They had only recently relocated to Minneapolis from Kansas City, Missouri.
“I don’t hate the people that took Renee from us,” Becca Good said.
“But what I want them to understand: Every single day they get to look at their children and their wives and their sisters and know what they took from our family. They took a mother away from her children. They know that. And they will carry it forever.”
The family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. government seeks damages for “the immense suffering” Good endured in the final moments of her life “and for the profound and permanent losses that her death has inflicted upon her family.”
The other lawsuit, against Ross and top federal immigration officials, paints Operation Metro Surge as a conspiracy to trample the civil rights of Somali and other immigrants and accuses the administration of targeting Becca instead of thoroughly investigating Good’s killing.
The government sought to hide evidence of what happened to Good, the lawsuit said, and senior officials were concerned that pursuing a civil rights investigation into the killing would undermine Trump’s claims that she had tried to kill an officer.
Operation Metro Surge, the lawsuit said, was a “carefully planned, coordinated effort” to make Somali and Hispanic immigrants “the object of aggression and abduction.” The crackdown, the lawsuit said, used intimidation, violence and the threat of arrest to intimidate neighbors and allies “who observed, documented and warned of that campaign.”
Other defendants include: Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign manager who also served as one of Noem’s advisers; former acting director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons; former U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino; and 10 unnamed federal agents.
The news conference announcing the lawsuit was held in the atrium of University of St. Thomas School of Law, and dozens of law students stood on balconies of upper floors watching the family and lawyers speak.
“The time is absolutely now for accountability for the deep damage done by ICE and others,” Ganger said. “We will not be quiet. We will not go away.”
In social media accounts, Renee Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” On Pinterest, a profile picture shows her smiling and holding a young child, alongside posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.
In an interview shortly after her death, her mother, Donna Ganger, told The Associated Press: “She had this way of making you feel special and loved that I didn’t even understand that until we lost her.”
Good's partner noted the broader loss to communities nationwide.
“As we have tried to navigate our own massive loss, I am also devastated by how many other lives have been destroyed in this darkest of times,” Becca Good said in a news release Thursday. “So many other families are dealing with the loss of their loved ones; to everyone who has had to witness it — the pain of this moment extends far beyond our family. What happened to us should never happen to any family.”
McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
The family of Renee Good, from left; father Tim Ganger, mother Donna Ganger, brother Luke Ganger and brother Brent Ganger, listen during a news conference after the family sued the U.S. government and several immigration officials, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Becca Good, Renee Good's partner, speaks during a news conference after Good's family sued the U.S. government and several immigration officials, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Becca Good, Renee Good's partner, stands on stage during a news conference after Good's family sued the U.S. government and several immigration officials, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Becca Good, Renee Good's partner, arrives for a news conference after Good's family sued the U.S. government and several immigration officials, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Brent Ganger, the brother of Renee Good, who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January, wears a button reading "Be Good" as he speaks during a Congressional spotlight hearing on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
FILE - Brent and Luke Ganger, brothers of Renee Good, from left, and their parents, Donna and Tim Ganger, are pictured during an interview, while holding up a frame with photographs of Good when she graduated from Old Dominion University, in Denver, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
FILE - Flowers and photos are left at a memorial site for Renee Good on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
