After ICE killing, Bay Area district attorneys question whether federal agents can be held to account

In the eyes of Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, the reaction inside the White House to Renee Good’s death earlier this month — and the president’s quick exoneration of the immigration agent who shot her — served as a troubling harbinger for the Bay Area.

“If that’s what they’re doing in Minneapolis, they’re going to do the same thing here,” Rosen said. “What I can say definitively is that my office will independently investigate any fatal use of force by law enforcement. … That is the right thing to do.”

Yet numerous challenges await state and county prosecutors if a federal agent is involved in a similar shooting in the Bay Area.

Legal observers say that Bay Area county prosecutors would likely struggle to investigate or prosecute U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents if a comparable situation were to occur.

Those prosecutors would “have a strong obligation to act,” given interest by their constituents here in the Bay Area, said Jonathan Simon, a law professor at UC Berkeley. Yet any such local effort would likely run headlong into a growing reality that “Trump and his underlings in the homeland security sector are just kind of openly suggesting the law doesn’t apply to them.”

“I fear that it would not get far,” said Simon, of any local prosecution. “It says that we’re kind of off the rails, when it comes to the idea that the government — even when it uses violence — is doing so within at least its good faith interpretation of the law, and trying to live within it.”

Rosen, who has largely remained quiet about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, said he felt compelled to break his silence after watching the video of ICE Agent Jonathan Ross firing his gun at close range, striking Good as she sat in her SUV.

Hours after Good’s Jan. 7 death, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled Good a “domestic terrorist,” while Trump claimed she “viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” a conclusion that is not supported by video evidence.

“I wish I could say it’s just noise, but it’s not noise,” Rosen said. “It’s direction to the individuals in federal law enforcement that are investigating, and I think that unfortunately undermines confidence in the outcome of an investigation.”

The federal Justice Department, following the early declarations by Trump and Noem, has stymied efforts by Minnesota authorities to investigate the shooting by denying state and local investigators access to evidence in the case. Meanwhile, the DOJ itself is unwilling to open a civil-rights inquiry, a frequent federal move in disputed law enforcement shootings.

On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation,” the Associated Press reported. That same day, six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over that stance, as well as the simultaneous push by the agency to instead investigate the slain woman’s widow for any potential ties to activist groups, The New York Times reported.

The complicated legal morass — along with the politicized nature of the U.S. Department of Justice under Trump — raises questions about how local authorities can hold federal agents to account amid an escalating federal immigration crackdown.

Federal officials’ reluctance to cooperate with Minnesota authorities is “very concerning, because both the state and the federal government have an interest in doing justice,” said Jonathan Abel, a law professor at UC San Francisco.

Normally, Abel said, state and federal authorities work together on such investigations — at times, even bringing separate cases aimed at the same defendants, such as against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the 2020 death of George Floyd. In that case, state prosecutors brought murder charges against the officer while federal prosecutors filed civil rights charges against him.

Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, less than a mile from where Ross shot Good dead.

“It’s disturbing that the federal government is apparently not investigating a potential killing of an unarmed person,” Abel added.

No matter the approach, local prosecutors’ legal options are limited.

Simon, the UC Berkeley law professor, noted that a smooth path exists for federal officials to petition a judge to move their cases into federal court, under the jurisdiction of a Justice Department that appears increasingly cowed by Trump.

That path, outlined in federal statute, largely pertains to federal officers accused of wrongdoing in the context of their job.

Federal law also may allow for slightly greater leeway among officers accused of using deadly force, with agents only required to prove that their actions were “objectively reasonable.” In contrast, California law requires that force be “necessary.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2025 that any such determination on reasonable force must consider the “totality of the circumstances,” rather than an officer’s actions at the “moment of threat” — potentially broadening the evidence that could be considered in any given shooting.

Prosecutions of federal agents who fire their weapons on the job are rare. From 2015 to 2021, ICE agents shot and killed 23 people in 59 known shootings, according to The Trace, a nonprofit entity covering gun violence. No agents were charged.

Rosen, one of the Bay Area’s longest-serving district attorneys in its most populous county, vowed to investigate federal agents who use force against Santa Clara County residents.

“Another agency could make it difficult for us to gather all the evidence we need to do a comprehensive investigation,” he said. “So be it. We will investigate.”

Other area district attorneys offered similar — if slightly more muted — vows for action.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe — who, like Rosen, was first elected in 2010 — called it “bad policy” for federal authorities not to cooperate with local prosecutors.

“Now, I recognize they have some bosses back in D.C. they may have to listen to,” Wagstaffe added. “But on a technical level, when there’s someone killed by a law enforcement officer in San Mateo County, I expect my office to investigate.”

Diana Becton, Contra Costa County’s district attorney since 2017, highlighted the “significant and troubling challenge” presented when federal authorities exhibit “exclusive” control over the investigation and prosecution of an on-duty shooting, as happened in Minnesota. In a statement, she suggested that “it undermines confidence in the justice system and the rule of law itself.”

Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson, who was appointed in 2025, added in her own statement that “no one is above the law, including federal agents.”

For her part, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who took office in 2022, expressed “disgust” during a KQED interview at the Trump administration’s move to justify the shooting so quickly. But she noted how her office must contend with “a complicated and complex set of laws” in prosecuting federal agents. Becton, Jenkins and Jones Dickson did not grant interviews to the Bay Area News Group on the subject.

Former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price — who recently announced a campaign to retake the office she was recalled from in 2024 — suggested federal agents may feel more empowered to use force due to the words and actions of President Trump.

“He is creating his own private security force that he can deploy into any community, without regard for the constitutional rights of the residents and without any concern for the will of the local officials,” Price said. “He’s weaponized the Justice Department over this last year. Now it’s being reflected in the physical force that he’s been building for the last year.”

To Rosen, “federal agencies should want local law enforcement and DA’s offices to investigate these incidents.”

“It gives credibility to the investigation and the results of the investigation,” he said. “Without that credibility, everyone loses faith in the rule of law. And faith in the rule of law is what keeps us safe and what keeps us a democracy.”