DOJ won’t pursue civil rights probe in Renee Good killing by ICE officer

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will not launch a criminal civil rights investigation into the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, a senior department official said Tuesday.

The move marks a departure from past administrations that moved quickly to open Justice Department civil rights reviews of fatal incidents involving law enforcement, even in cases where criminal charges were deemed unlikely.

Two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that attorneys in the Civil Rights Division were told last week that they would not be part of the investigation at this time.

In response to these reports, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Digital on Tuesday: “There is no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation at this time.”

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CNN first reported Blanche’s statement, which did not provide details on how the Justice Department concluded that no investigation was necessary.

Federal authorities said Good was acting in self-defense when he drove toward the ICE officer and described the driver’s actions as “an act of domestic terrorism.”

Still, the Justice Department’s decision to exclude the Civil Rights Division from the investigation before it was completed raised concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment to a full review of the events leading up to the shooting.

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The Justice Department is breaking from a longstanding pattern of rapid-fire civil rights investigations. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Minnesota officials claimed that federal authorities blocked state investigators from accessing evidence in the case and that the state lacked the authority to independently investigate the murder, according to the AP.

“As with officer-involved shootings, every law enforcement agency has an internal investigation protocol, including DHS,” a Justice Department official told Fox News Digital. “So ICE OPR’s own investigation is ongoing. This runs parallel to any FBI investigation.”

Following the verdict, there was a wave of division among federal prosecutors handling the case. Nearly a half-dozen prosecutors at the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office and several supervisors in the criminal division of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington have resigned in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Among those who resigned was First Assistant Attorney General Joseph Thompson, who oversaw major fraud cases in Minnesota, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The situation drew harsh criticism from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

“These prosecutors are heroes and the people pushing to prosecute Renee’s widow are monsters,” Frey wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “The administration has also set back anti-fraud efforts by pursuing persecution by pushing out prosecutors working on these cases.”

The resignations are part of a broader exodus in the careers of Justice Department lawyers due to concerns about political pressure and shifting enforcement priorities under the Trump administration.

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The Justice Department denied the resignations were linked to the Minnesota case, saying prosecutors requested participation in an early retirement program long before the shootings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.