Senior FBI officials directed agents to stand down from a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minnesota — just as a signed search warrant was about to be executed on her SUV. The directive, according to a New York Times report published Saturday, came from officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, driven by concerns that the investigation's findings could contradict public statements made by President Trump and senior administration officials about the incident.
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota had been handling the case as a standard review of the use of force in civil rights cases. Senior federal prosecutor Joseph H. Thompson had obtained a signed warrant to examine Good's vehicle for forensic evidence — including bullet trajectories and blood spatter — the kind of physical evidence that settles disputes about what actually happened. Then the order came down to stop.
Thompson and five colleagues resigned in protest. More departures followed.
According to Newsmax, the administration had already staked out a public position on the shooting before investigators finished their work. President Trump stated that Good had "violently, willfully, and viciously" struck the ICE agent with her vehicle. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly labeled Good a "domestic terrorist." Vice President JD Vance echoed that description.
Those are serious characterizations — and if they're accurate, the forensic evidence would confirm them. That's what decides to halt the warrant, so puzzling. If the physical evidence backs the administration's account, a thorough investigation is an asset, not a liability. Bullet trajectories and blood spatter don't have political opinions. They either corroborate the official narrative or they don't.
Blocking the examination of evidence doesn't project strength. It projects anxiety about what the evidence might show.
After the warrant was halted, Justice Department leadership reportedly urged prosecutors to pursue a different strategy: seek a new warrant under the theory that Good's vehicle had been used to assault the ICE officer, and shift investigative focus toward Good's unnamed partner.
Career prosecutors objected, viewing the alternative approach as legally questionable and politically inflammatory. That objection matters. These aren't activist lawyers from a nonprofit. These are federal prosecutors — the kind of people who build cases against criminals for a living — telling their superiors that the proposed path didn't hold up. Whether prosecutors ultimately obtained a new warrant remains unclear.
The resignations from Minnesota's U.S. attorney's office weren't a single dramatic gesture. Thompson left first, then five others, then more after that. That kind of rolling exodus from a federal office isn't normal. It suggests a sustained disagreement, not a momentary clash.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara warned The New York Times that the resignations and politicization of cases could derail progress in targeting serious criminal threats. The reference to "multiple killings involving federal officers" in Minnesota adds weight to that concern — these offices have real caseloads with real stakes, and institutional dysfunction doesn't stay contained to one investigation.
There is a perfectly sound conservative argument for robust immigration enforcement. ICE officers operate in dangerous conditions, and the federal government has every right — indeed, a duty — to protect agents carrying out lawful operations. If Renee Good used her vehicle as a weapon against a federal officer, the shooting may well have been justified. That's a conclusion the evidence should be allowed to reach.
But the conservative commitment to law and order has never meant that law enforcement actions are above scrutiny. It means the opposite: that the system works because accountability exists, because evidence is gathered and weighed, because the process commands respect precisely because it isn't rigged. Stopping a signed warrant to protect a political narrative — from either direction — corrodes the very institutions conservatives have spent decades defending.
The left will use this story to attack immigration enforcement broadly. They always do. Every use-of-force incident becomes a referendum on whether borders should exist at all. That framing is dishonest and should be rejected. But the answer to dishonest framing isn't to shut down investigations. It's to let the facts speak — and trust that the truth serves your position better than silence does.
The Justice Department and FBI both declined to comment to The New York Times. Federal prosecutors reviewed video evidence of the incident, though no details about what that footage showed have been made public. The forensic examination of Good's SUV — the one that could answer the most basic factual questions about what happened — remains in limbo. The administration labeled Renee Good a domestic terrorist. If that's true, the evidence will prove it. The question is why anyone would be afraid to look.