The woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis last week served on the board of her son’s school, which linked to documents encouraging parents to monitor ICE and directing them to training.
The documents shed new light
on Renee Good’s connection to efforts to monitor and potentially disrupt ICE operations – an association that federal officials have made clear is at the center of their review into the deadly incident that occurred as she partially blocked ICE agents in the street with her SUV.
But four legal experts who reviewed the documents for CNN said they largely describe nonviolent civil disobedience tactics practiced at American protests for generations – far from the sinister depiction of extremism and domestic terrorism portrayed by Trump administration officials like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance.
“There’s nothing in there that suggests attacking ICE agents or engaging in any other form of physical harm or property damage,” said Timothy Zick, a professor at William and Mary Law School who wrote a book on protest law. “This is authoritarianism 101 where you blame the dissenters and the activists for causing their own death.”
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In order to not be dishonored, federal prosecuters are resigning:
Six lawyers from US attorney’s office in Minnesota quit along with four leaders of DoJ’s civil rights division
www.theguardian.com
A wave of federal prosecutors in Minnesota and Washington DC have resigned in protest over the justice department’s decision not to hold a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of an unarmed US citizen by a federal immigration agent in
Minneapolis.
Six lawyers from the US attorney’s office in Minnesota quit on Tuesday over the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter of Renee Nicole Good, the
New York Times reported.
Among them is Joseph H Thompson, who was second in command at the office and led a
large-scale fraud inquiry last year that led in part to the Trump administration sending a surge of immigration agents into the state.
Thompson and his colleagues, the Times said, were upset at senior justice department officials demanding a criminal inquiry into any ties between Good and her widow, Becca, into activist groups; and the refusal of the
FBI to allow state investigators to join its investigation of the shooting.
Separately, four leaders of a crucial division in the US justice department have also resigned. The lawyers left the civil rights division, which has a criminal investigations unit that investigates the use of force by police officers,
according to MS Now, citing three people it said were briefed about the departures.
The resignations follow a decision by Harmeet Dhillon, the
Trump administration-aligned assistant attorney general for civil rights,
not to investigate the 7 January killing of Good by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agent.
Dhillon told the unit the week before that it would not be involved in any investigation,
Reuters reported a source as saying.
On Tuesday, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said in a statement: “There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.” The statement, first reported by CNN, did not elaborate on how the department had reached a conclusion that no investigation was warranted.