Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent\u2019s use of force.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good\u2019s civil rights. <\/p>\n
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good\u2019s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation \u2014 by using a warrant obtained on that basis \u2014 would contradict President Trump\u2019s claim<\/a> that Ms. Good \u201cviolently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer\u201d who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.<\/p>\n Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good\u2019s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood.<\/p>\n Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over. Mr. Thompson and five others left the office in protest<\/a>, setting off a broader wave of resignations that has left Minnesota\u2019s U.S. attorney\u2019s office severely understaffed and in crisis. Officials have not said whether they ultimately obtained a new warrant to search the vehicle. <\/p>\n From an office of about 25 criminal litigators, gone are the top prosecutors who had overseen a sprawling, yearslong investigation<\/a> into fraud in Minnesota\u2019s social services programs, which the White House months ago cited as a reason for the immigration crackdown in the state. <\/p>\n The departures also have drained the U.S. attorney\u2019s office as it prepares complex cases, including trials in the fatal attack on a Minnesota state lawmaker<\/a> and in a terrorism case<\/a>, and investigations into fentanyl trafficking. <\/p>\n The prosecutors who remain have been flooded with new cases<\/a> related to the immigration crackdown \u2014 allegations of assaults<\/a> on federal officers and lawsuits challenging the legality of individual detentions of immigrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is potentially destroying all of the progress that we have made, working together between local and federal law enforcement officials in a very coordinated way, to actually go after the worst of the worst,\u201d Brian O\u2019Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, said in an interview. <\/p>\n This account of tumult at the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Minnesota is based on interviews with about a dozen people in Minnesota and Washington, D.C., familiar with the events. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation from the administration. Some read from notes they took during key moments. <\/p>\n Cindy Burnham, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Minnesota, declined to comment for this article, as did Daniel N. Rosen, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota. Emily Covington, a Justice Department spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n A Fraud Scandal<\/p>\n The crisis at the U.S. attorney\u2019s office followed a turbulent year. <\/p>\n The Minnesota office was led temporarily by assistant U.S. attorneys for months as Mr. Trump\u2019s nominee for U.S. attorney, Mr. Rosen, awaited confirmation.<\/p>\n Some career prosecutors in the office, which has a long reputation for winning complex and high-profile cases<\/a>, were unsettled by a memo that Attorney General Pam Bondi issued in February 2025<\/a>, signaling that the Department of Justice would \u201czealously advance\u201d Mr. Trump\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n For months, the prosecutors in Minnesota focused their attention on high-impact cases that were already underway, including the investigation into fraud in social services programs, largely insulating the office from some priorities in Washington. The office mantra became: \u201cThe best defense is a good offense.\u201d <\/p>\n That approach unraveled late last year. News articles about the fraud cases<\/a> \u2014 and later a video by a right-wing influencer<\/a> \u2014 drew attention from Mr. Trump. Administration officials focused on the fact that most of the defendants charged in the sprawling fraud cases were of Somali descent. Though most Somalis in Minnesota are citizens or legal residents of the United States, White House officials cited them and the rash of fraud as a reason to send thousands of immigration agents to the state. <\/p>\n Tensions quickly rose on the streets between immigration agents and Minnesotans. And at the prosecutors\u2019 office, the fraud investigations slowed as prosecutors said they were overwhelmed with requests for briefings from federal agencies on that issue.<\/p>\n Debating an Investigation<\/p>\n Not long after Ms. Good\u2019s death, senior administration officials were quick to blame her for the shooting. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, called Ms. Good a domestic terrorist<\/a>, language that Vice President JD Vance echoed<\/a>. <\/p>\n Even in a rules-shattering administration, the hasty conclusions about the shooting shocked federal prosecutors in Minnesota. Veteran lawyers in the office watched numerous videos of the shooting. Virtually all presumed there would be a civil rights investigation into the use of force, an approach often used in shootings involving law enforcement officers.<\/p>\n Some believed that a civil rights investigation could establish that the ICE agent had a reasonable fear for his life when he opened fire as Ms. Good\u2019s car began lurching toward him \u2014 the sort of police shooting investigators consider \u201cawful but lawful.\u201d Others suggested that such an investigation might find otherwise, or even that the failure of agents to provide medical aid to Ms. Good after the shooting might be deemed a civil rights violation. <\/p>\n Even Chris Madel<\/a>, a prominent Minnesota defense lawyer who provided legal advice to Mr. Ross, the agent, after the shooting, supported conducting a civil rights investigation. Mr. Madel worked at the Department of Justice years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the absence of an independent use-of-force investigation, you lead the public to believe that there must be something to hide,\u201d said Mr. Madel.<\/p>\n As Department of Justice officials pushed back against suggestions that a civil rights investigation was in order in the days after Ms. Good\u2019s death, clashes between Minnesota residents and immigration agents escalated. Some prosecutors were met with resistance when they urged supervisors to open investigations into reports of assaults and abuses by federal agents. The Justice Department also blocked the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension<\/a> from taking part in investigating Ms. Good\u2019s killing, adding to prosecutors\u2019 frustrations. <\/p>\n At one point, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol leader who was the face of the administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, called federal prosecutors, pressing them to charge demonstrators with crimes. When a prosecutor asked what the operation\u2019s end goal was, several people familiar with the call recalled Mr. Bovino saying that he did not intend to \u201ccalm it down,\u201d but instead, he said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to put it down.\u201d<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Not long after, Mr. Rosen, who took office as U.S. attorney in October, urged his top deputies again to seek the alternative warrant that leaders in Washington had called for, focusing on a criminal investigation into Ms. Good\u2019s partner and her behavior and ties to protest groups. <\/p>\n At that, Mr. Thompson submitted his resignation letter. Others soon followed.<\/p>\n Soon after, Ms. Bondi told Fox News<\/a> that the lawyers who left \u201csuddenly decided they didn\u2019t want to support the men and women at ICE.\u201d Referring to them as members of the \u201cdeep state,\u201d Ms. Bondi said she had fired them, resulting in the loss of months of unused vacation they had banked. <\/p>\n An Office on Edge<\/p>\n With roughly a dozen prosecutors gone, Mr. Rosen has worked to reassure those who remain in the office. As he sought to build a new leadership team, Mr. Rosen approached several prosecutors about possible promotions. At least three of them soon left the office: Allen Slaughter, the chief of narcotics investigations and cases from tribal territories; Dan Bobier, a fraud expert; and Lauren Roso, a national security specialist who was preparing to try a terrorism case. <\/p>\n None of the prosecutors who have left the office have discussed their reasons publicly. <\/p>\n Unease among prosecutors has continued to mount as the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation<\/a> into leading Democrats in the state and charges against nine people, including two journalists, accused in connection to a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn.,<\/a> where an ICE official serves as a pastor.<\/p>\n In recent days, as Mr. Rosen has sought to steady an office on edge, colleagues say he has made comments that unsettled them further. Several people said that Mr. Rosen vowed not to ask anyone to do anything illegal \u2014 an assurance that normally, the people said, would go without saying. <\/p>\n Mr. Rosen, a commercial litigator who had no prior criminal litigation experience, also has conveyed that the office, under his leadership, was committed to furthering the goals of Mr. Trump. <\/p>\n