Prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were told they will not play a role in the ongoing investigation into a fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Leadership in the Civil Rights Division, overseen by Harmeet Dhillon, informed staff in the division’s criminal section that there would not be an investigation, two sources said. Normally, after a high-profile incident involving a fatal shooting by an officer, attorneys from the criminal section fly out to the scene. Multiple career prosecutors offered to do so in this case, but they were told not to do so, one of the sources added. 

While investigations into the excessive use of force can be pursued solely by a U.S. Attorney’s office without direct involvement from the Civil Rights Division, it is customary for the division’s federal prosecutors to take the lead on high-profile investigations like the one in Minnesota.

The decision also raises questions about how far the FBI’s investigation into the shooting will go. 

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. 

On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that the FBI was leading the investigation into the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Video footage shows the officer, identified in court records from a prior incident as Jonathan Ross, fired three rounds at the car as Good started to drive away.

The video also appeared to depict the officers did not take immediate steps to ensure that Good received emergency medical care after the shooting took place. A separate video from the scene showed officers stopping a man who claimed to be a doctor from moving toward Good. 

The killing has sparked protests nationwide, including in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Detroit.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has argued that Ross was acting in self-defense, and claimed that Good was trying to use her car as a weapon in an act of “domestic terrorism.”

That description sparked immediate backlash from state and city officials, with the mayor of Minneapolis labeling the self-defense claims as “bulls***.”

On Friday, Trump administration officials shared another cellphone video of the incident that sources say was recorded by the ICE officer. The White House argues this video shows Ross was hit by Good’s car.

The Justice Department has stopped short of claiming Ross was acting in self-defense. 

But in a statement to CBS News this week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the use of deadly force by law enforcement officials can sometimes be justified.

“Federal agents risk their lives each day to safeguard our communities. They must make decisions, under dynamic and chaotic circumstances, in less time than it took to read this sentence,” Blanche said.

“The law does not require police to gamble with their lives in the face of a serious threat of harm. Rather, they may use deadly force when they face an immediate threat of significant physical harm,” he added.

The criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division specializes in investigating and prosecuting constitutional violations by law enforcement officers. 

Some of the most common investigations involve excessive use of force, but can also include other things such as sexual misconduct, false arrests or deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.

One of the most famous civil rights prosecutions by the section in recent years took place in Minneapolis, after former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in May 2020.

Chauvin pleaded guilty to willfully depriving, while acting under color of law, Floyd’s constitutional rights, as well as the rights of a 14-year-old boy.

Since President Trump took office last year, the Civil Rights Division has scaled back its work on excessive force prosecutions, according to legal experts. 

Last year, it sought to downplay the conviction of a former Louisville police officer who was convicted of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights and asked a federal judge to sentence him to serve just one day in prison.

The judge ultimately sentenced him to serve 33 months.

Tensions remained high on Friday as two separate shootings involving immigration agents in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, drew protesters to the streets and deepened fractures between federal and state officials.

In Portland, a U.S. Border Patrol officer shot and wounded two people on Jan. 8. The Department of Homeland Security called the driver a suspected Venezuelan gang member who “weaponized his vehicle.” Local officials called for a transparent investigation and demanded that federal agents leave the city.

The shooting came one day after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in her car in Minneapolis. The incident, caught on video, sparked fierce backlash as protesters, as well as local and state officials, refuted the Trump administration’s description of the shooting.

Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said it was forced to withdraw from an investigation into the deadly shooting after federal authorities withheld case materials and evidence. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the state doesn’t have jurisdiction.

Protests ramped up overnight with large demonstrations taking place in Portland, Minneapolis, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Phoenix, Arizona. The Portland Police Bureau said on Jan. 9 that six people were arrested during protests near an ICE facility. More demonstrations are expected over the weekend.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said the state’s Department of Justice is investigating the shooting in Portland involving a Border Patrol agent.

A day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, the case escalated sharply Thursday when federal authorities blocked state investigators from accessing evidence and declared that Minnesota has no jurisdiction to investigate the killing.

Legal experts said the dispute highlights a central question raised repeatedly as federal agents are deployed into cities for immigration enforcement: whether a federal officer carrying out a federally authorized operation can be criminally investigated or charged under state law.

The FBI told Minnesota law enforcement officials they would not be allowed to participate in the investigation or review key evidence in the shooting, which killed 37-year-old Renee Good on Wednesday. Local prosecutors said they were evaluating their legal options as federal authorities asserted control over the case.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged federal officials to reconsider, saying early public statements by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal leaders defending the agent risked undermining confidence in the investigation’s fairness.

Experts say there’s narrow precedent for state charges. And sometimes attempts at those charges have been cut short by claims of immunity under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which protects federal workers performing federally sanctioned, job-related duties. But that immunity isn’t a blanket protection for all conduct, legal experts said.

What is the standard for immunity?

If charges are brought, the federal agent is likely to argue he is immune from state prosecution under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“The legal standard basically is that a federal officer is immune from state prosecution if their actions were authorized by federal law and necessary and proper to fulfilling their duties,” said Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Yablon, who is the faculty co-director of the school’s State Democracy Research Initiative, said state prosecutors would have to consider both state and federal laws to overcome the hurdles of immunity. They would first need to show a violation of state statutes to bring charges, but also that the use of force was unconstitutionally excessive under federal law.

“If the actions violated the Fourth Amendment, you can’t say those actions were exercised under federal law,” he said, referring to the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

Hurdles to state charges

The whole endeavor is made more complicated if there is not cooperation between federal and state authorities to investigate the shooting.

Walz said federal authorities rescinded a cooperation agreement with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and he urged them to reverse course, warning that Minnesotans were losing confidence in the investigation’s independence. Noem confirmed the decision, saying: “They have not been cut out; they don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”

State officials have been vocal about finding a way to continue their own parallel investigation.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said during an interview on CNN that the move by federal authorities to not allow state participation does not mean state officials can’t conduct their own investigation.

But local officials in Hennepin County said they’d be in the dark if the FBI chose not to share their findings. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement that her office is “exploring all options to ensure a state level investigation can continue.”

“If the FBI is the sole investigative agency, the state will not receive the investigative findings, and our community may never learn about its contents,” she said.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche defended federal agents’ use of force, saying Thursday that officers often must make split-second decisions in dangerous and chaotic situations. In a statement posted on social media, Blanche said the law does not require officers “to gamble with their lives in the face of a serious threat of harm,” and added that standard protocols ensure evidence is collected and preserved following officer-involved shootings.

In many cases involving use-of-force, investigators examine how the specific officer was trained, if they followed their training or if they acted against standard protocol in the situation. It’s unclear if state investigators will be granted access to training records and standards or even interviews with other federal agents at the scene Wednesday, if they continue a separate investigation.

During the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd, prosecutors called one of the department’s training officers to testify that Chauvin acted against department training.

Precedents and other legal issues

Samantha Trepel, the Rule of Law program director at States United Democracy Center and a former prosecutor with the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote a guest article for Just Security Wednesday in the wake of the fatal shooting. The piece focused on the Department of Justice silence in the face of violent tactics being used in immigration enforcement efforts.

Trepel, who participated in the prosecution of officers involved in Floyd’s death, told AP Thursday that the current DOJ lacks the independence of previous administrations.

“In previous administrations, DOJ conducted independent and thorough investigations of alleged federal officers’ excessive force. Even though the feds were investigating feds, they had a track record of doing this work credibly,” Trepel said. “This included bringing in expert investigators and civil rights prosecutors from Washington who didn’t have close relationships and community ties with the individuals they were investigating.”

Trepel said in a standard federal investigation of alleged unlawful lethal force, the FBI and DOJ would conduct a thorough investigation interviewing witnesses, collecting video, reviewing policies and training, before determining whether an agent committed a prosecutable federal crime.

“I hope it’s happening now, but we have little visibility,” she said. “The administration can conduct immigration enforcement humanely and without these brutal tactics and chaos. They can arrest people who have broken the law and keep the public safe without sacrificing who we are as Americans.”

Questions about medical aid after the shooting

In other high-profile fatal police shootings, officers have faced administrative discipline for failing to provide or promptly secure medical aid after using force.

Video circulating from Wednesday’s shooting shows a man approaching officers and identifying himself as a physician, asking whether he could check Good’s pulse and provide aid. An agent tells him to step back, says emergency medics are on the way, and warns him that he could be arrested if he does not comply.

Witness video later showed medics unable to reach the scene in their vehicle, and people carrying Good away. Authorities have not said whether actions taken after the shooting, including efforts to provide medical assistance, will be reviewed as part of the federal investigation.

In other cases, including the 2023 death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, failures to render medical aid were cited among the reasons officers were fired and later charged.