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 oversaw a 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 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.

President Donald Trump and several top aides have seized on the fraud investigation 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.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Ernesto Londoño/David Guttenfelder
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