The Department of Justice has been hit by a wave of resignations after President Donald Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights refused to open an investigation into the ICE killing of a Minnesota woman.
The criminal section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division usually investigates fatal shootings by law enforcement officers and specializes in determining whether deadly force was justified.
But Trump’s anti-woke pick to lead the office, 2020 election denier Harmeet Dhillon, said she wouldn’t open a probe into the killing of Renee Nicole Good, 37, who was shot in the face by an ICE agent while trying to leave the scene of a protest.
That decision has infuriated top civil rights officials, with four quitting in protest, MS NOW reported. The departures include the section chief, principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief.
A source told MS NOW that the departing employees were also concerned about other decisions the division’s leadership had made, though they didn’t specify which ones.
It was the Civil Rights Division’s worst exodus since February, when five leaders and supervisors left the Public Integrity Section, which investigates corruption, after Trump ordered they dismiss the office’s bribery case against then-New York Mayor Eric Adams.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
For decades, prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division have been the nation’s leading experts on determining whether law enforcement officers have broken the law, violated department police, failed to de-escalate, and illegally resorted to the use of deadly force, sources told MS NOW.
The division was established following the enactment of the 1957 Civil Rights Act to enforce federal laws protecting constitutional and civil rights, and his historically focused on prosecuting major crimes including hate crimes, human trafficking, and law enforcement misconduct.
Under Assistant Attorney General Dhillon, those priorities have shifted to rooting out DEI in hiring, investigating vandalism of anti-abortion pregnancy centers, suing to overturn state-level gun control measures, and collecting evidence of non-citizens voting in elections.
Last summer, Dhillon recommended that a former Louisville police officer who participated in the raid that killed Breonna Taylor not serve a single day in prison, and instead be sentenced to supervised release. The judge sentenced him to 33 months in prison.
As for the ICE killing, the Trump administration has falsely claimed that Jonathan Ross, the 43-year-old agent who shot Good, enjoys “absolute immunity” from prosecution because he was a federal agent “doing his job.”
The Supreme Court has held that the president enjoys absolute immunity from criminal persecution for all “official acts” but has not extended that same protection to other federal officials.
Both Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also originally said Good was trying to run over the agents with her car, with Noem accusing the Christian stay-at-home mother of “domestic terrorism.”
Video shows that Good’s tires were turned away from the agent.
The Trump administration has nevertheless tried to prevent the state of Minnesota, which has jurisdiction over potential murder cases, from investigating Good’s killing, which is being probed by the FBI.
Over the weekend, thousands of people protested her death at hundreds of anti-ICE rallies in cities across the U.S.
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