6 federal prosecutors in Minn. quit over push to investigate ICE shooting victim’s widow

Joseph H. Thompson, a career federal prosecutor who was the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota last year, was among those who resigned as the Justice Department sought to examine the woman’s supposed ties to activist groups.

Joseph H. Thompson, a federal prosecutor, has led the prosecution of fraud in social services programs in Minnesota. Ben Brewer / The New York Times

By Ernesto Londoño, New York Times Service

updated on January 13, 2026

6 minutes to read

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second-in-command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday.

Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara said in an interview that Thompson’s resignation dealt a major blow to efforts to root out rampant theft from state agencies. The fraud cases, which involve schemes to cheat safety net programs, were the chief reason the Trump administration cited for its immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are U.S. citizens of Somali origin.

“When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud,” O’Hara said.

The other senior career prosecutors who resigned include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Jacobs had been Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit.

Thompson, Jacobs, Williams and Calhoun-Lopez declined to discuss the reasons they resigned. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s resignations followed tumultuous days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as prosecutors struggled to manage the outrage over Good’s killing, which set off angry protests in Minnesota and across the nation.

After Good was shot, the Justice Department decided to forgo a civil rights investigation that would establish whether the ICE officer’s use of deadly force was justified. That decision led several career prosecutors at the department’s civil rights division in Washington to resign in protest, MS Now reported Monday.

Instead, the Justice Department launched an investigation to examine ties between Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting the conduct of immigration agents in recent weeks. Shortly after Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem referred to Good as a “domestic terrorist.”

A makeshift memorial for Renee Good has grown on the street where she was shot and killed in Minneapolis. – David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Becca Good said in a statement last week that she and her wife had “stopped to support our neighbors” when they got into a tense confrontation with ICE agents that led to the shooting. “We had whistles,” Becca Good wrote. “They had guns.”

Thompson strenuously objected to the decision not to investigate the shooting as a civil rights matter, and was outraged by the demand to launch a criminal investigation into Becca Good, according to the people familiar with the developments, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Thompson had originally set out to investigate the shooting in partnership with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that reviews police shootings. Senior Justice Department officials overruled the decision to cooperate with the state agency.

Drew Evans, the superintendent of the bureau, called Thompson’s departure a major setback for the effort to root out fraud in the state and for public safety.

“We’re losing a true public servant,” Evans said. “We really need professional prosecutors.

“The absence of a credible and comprehensive investigation into Ms. Good’s killing stands to undermine trust in our public safety agencies,” Evans added.

Thompson’s departure came during the chaotic immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which has angered many residents and left officials bracing for an escalation of violence.

Begun in December with the deployment of roughly 100 federal agents from out of state, the operation has swelled to include some 2,000 federal agents. By comparison, the Minneapolis Police Department has 600 officers.

Local leaders and immigrant rights groups have decried the agents’ conduct, saying they have been stopping people based only on looks and accents. Often, these stops have led to the violent arrest of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, according to local officials and observers who have recorded mayhem using cellphones.

On Monday, Minnesota’s attorney general and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding an end to the crackdown, asserting that it had led to numerous abuses and civil rights violations.

O’Hara told The New York Times in an interview that the operation could lead to more deaths and the kind of widespread civil unrest that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The Trump administration has cited the fraud investigation that Thompson led to justify the surge of agents, which federal officials have called the largest immigration enforcement operation in history.

Most of the defendants charged to date are of Somali ancestry but are U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization.

President Donald Trump and several top aides have seized on the matter to argue that Somalis are swindling the nation. Trump has called Somalis “garbage,” and he said his administration was considering denaturalizing some, because, he says, “they hate our country.”

Thompson grew frustrated in recent weeks as the immigration surge became a distraction for the office’s work on fraud, undermining the goal the administrations said it was trying to pursue, according to people familiar with his thinking.

The fraud cases, which involve plots to bill state agencies for safety net services that were never provided, have cost taxpayers several billion dollars, according to Thompson.

After new facets of the investigation came to light last fall, the scandal became a major crisis for Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who has struggled to explain why so much money was stolen on his watch.

Walz, a Democrat who had been hoping to win a third term in November, sought for months to weather the scandal by strengthening safeguards.

Demonstrators, including Gov. Tim Walz, at center in plaid, at a vigil for Good at the State Capitol in Saint Paul. – David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

But this month, facing threats and investigations from federal agencies, the governor suspended his campaign. Walz said he concluded that the work of rooting out fraud demanded his entire attention during the final year of his term, which will end shortly after the end of this year.

Walz lamented Thompson’s resignation Tuesday, calling him “a principled public servant who spent more than a decade achieving justice for Minnesotans.” He added: “It’s also the latest sign Trump is pushing nonpartisan career professionals out of the Justice Department, replacing them with his sycophants.”

Thompson’s departure is a major blow to the effort. A self-described workaholic, he has encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of investigations involving a complex web of defendants and transactions.

More than 90 people have been charged since 2022 and at least 60 have been convicted of defrauding programs meant to feed children during the pandemic, aid people at risk of homelessness and treat minors with autism.

As the scandal drew national attention, Thompson became a high-profile figure, earning praise from elected officials across the political spectrum. Several urged him to run for office, something Thompson — who refuses to discuss his political preferences — has said he has ruled out.

Thompson, a Stanford-trained lawyer who was born and raised in Minnesota, joined the Justice Department nearly 17 years ago. Before joining the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, he worked in Chicago from 2009 to 2014 prosecuting street gangs, drug cartels, public corruption and domestic terrorism cases.

In 2023, he was assigned to the team that investigated President Joe Biden for keeping classified documents in his residence and office after his term as vice president ended. That team chose not to criminally charge Biden, having concluded that his cognitive decline would likely stand in the way of a successful prosecution.

Thompson was acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota for several months starting in early June, and oversaw cases that included the prosecution of the man accused of assassinating Melissa Hortman, the former speaker of the state House of Representatives.