Days after the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, six federal prosecutors in Minnesota reportedly resigned on Tuesday local time over the Trump administration's attempts to investigate her widow, Becca, and its reluctance to investigate the shooter.
This was first reported by The New York Times, which cited people with knowledge of the federal prosecutors' decisions.
What we know about the resignations
Those who resigned included career prosecutor and former Acting US attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, his deputy Harry Jacobs, and senior prosecutors Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, among others.
However, the resigning prosecutors refused to give public statements or explain the reasons for their decisions, NYT reported, citing sources for further information.
The resignations came after senior officials from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) pushed for a criminal investigation into the actions of Good's widow, Becca.
Reportedly, before his resignation, Thompson had set out to investigate Good's killing and probe the ICE agent's actions in partnership with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that reviews police shootings. His decision, however, was overruled by senior DOJ officials.
Growing outrage in Minnesota
Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday. Her killing sparked mass outrage and protests in Minnesota, as well as other parts of the US.
Despite the outrage, NYT reported that Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, told her staff that she would not consider investigating whether the ICE agent had violated federal law.
US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, "There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation" into the ICE agent who shot and killed Good.
Instead, the DOJ decided to probe ties between Good and Becca, after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem described Good as a "domestic terrorist".
Noem's assertion went directly against what Becca said in the aftermath of Good's shooting—"We had whistles. They had guns," Becca had written following the incident, explaining that she and Good had "stopped to support our neighbours".
Good's shooting and the current spate of resignations of prosecutors come during a testing time for Minnesota, which has seen allegations of large-scale fraud and is currently in the midst of a major immigration crackdown that has seen the deployment of as many as 2,000 federal agents in the state.
