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More federal prosecutors in Minnesota have resigned or are preparing to do so, in part because the Trump administration has asked them to file criminal charges against anti-ICE protesters without appropriate evidence, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation.

The prosecutors, at the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, have been deluged with allegations of protesters assaulting Homeland Security agents. The administration is pressuring them to file charges even when agents have not turned over body-cam footage to support the charges, and when information exists to suggest the officer may have assaulted the protester first, according to the sources, who declined to be named for fear of retribution. “That’s historically not how we do things,” one told me. Traditionally, “you see the evidence first and then decide what to charge; you don’t charge and then see the evidence. It’s a horrible way of doing business.”

“There’s such a loss of trust with DOJ’s actions.”

On Friday, the Justice Department announced that former CNN anchor Don Lemon and three others had been arrested for allegedly violating federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul this month. The day before, US Attorney Daniel Rosen, who leads the Minnesota office, announced that 16 protesters had been charged with assaulting federal officers and federal property. The office’s attorneys are also being asked to focus on cases that accuse activist groups of conspiring to impede the work of immigration agents, my sources said.

What’s more, my sources told me, the office has not opened a single case against any immigration officer in the Twin Cities since the federal surge began in December, despite a proliferation of videos that show agents dragging people from their cars, pepper-spraying individuals in the face at close range, beating protesters, and, of course, killing two people.

A group of attorneys from the office’s criminal division met with Rosen earlier this week to express their concerns, particularly about the Justice Department’s lack of a civil rights investigation into the Border Patrol officers who killed Alex Pretti on January 24—instead, the Department of........

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