A group of Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned on Tuesday, days after the U.S. Justice Department decided not to investigate the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three by an armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in Minneapolis.
The lawyers walked out of the civil rights division, which has a criminal investigation unit responsible for investigating police brutality, The Guardian reported.
The foregoing of a civil rights investigation of the ICE agent means it will not be established whether his use of deadly force was justified. The FBI, however, is proceeding with an investigation examining connections between Good, her wife, Becca Good, and several groups that had been surveilling and demonstrating against the behaviour of ICE agents in recent weeks, the New York Times said.
Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
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In a statement last week, Becca said that she and her late wife had “stopped to support our neighbours” when the couple became embroiled in a tense exchange with ICE agents that resulted in the fatal shooting.
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“We had whistles,” Becca wrote. “They had guns.”
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The Justice Department confirmed the lawyers had quit in a statement to The Guardian, but denied the decision was related to Good’s death or the FBI’s investigation into her wife.
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“Although we typically don’t comment on personnel matters, we can confirm that the criminal section leadership gave notice to depart the civil rights division and requested to participate in the Department of Justice’s early retirement program well before the events in Minnesota,” the statement said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
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Joseph H. Thompson, who oversaw a fraud investigation into Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who resigned, the New York Times reported.
Other senior prosecutors who quit include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez.
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None of the prosecutors who resigned disclosed their exact reasons for leaving their jobs.
“This is a huge loss for our state,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of the resignations. “This is the latest sign that President Trump is pushing nonpartisan career professionals out of the Department of Justice.”
The cases overseen by Thompson, which involved efforts to defraud state-managed social safety-net programs, preceded the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Some of the defendants charged in the fraud cases were of Somali heritage.
Tuesday’s resignations came in the wake of widespread protests in Minnesota and beyond over the killing of Good, who U.S. officials, including Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, accused of being a “domestic terrorist,” after footage captured Good attempting to drive away from ICE agents before being shot in the head in her car came to light.
The Trump administration’s narrative has been widely condemned by other American leaders, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said the federal government were spinning “bulls–t,” and Walz, who accused it of being a “propaganda machine.”
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