Key events
Yesterday’s killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers came weeks after Renee Good, also a 37-year-old American citizen, was killed on 7 January by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis, sparking outrage nationwide.
My colleague Richard Luscombe reports in this story:
The death of Good, who relatives said was acting as a legal observer of a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Minneapolis, has raised tensions in the Minnesota city and sparked a fight between the Trump administration and local officials.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly insisted that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who aimed her car at the ICE agent. The officer was forced to fire in self-defense, they claimed.
Multiple video clips of the encounter, however, show that Good was steering away from the agent as she tried to drive away, and at least two of the shots were fired from the side of the vehicle. State officials are angry that they have been cut out of an FBI inquiry, and that federal authorities are looking into Good’s widow and Democratic leaders in Minnesota, including the governor, Tim Walz, and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, and not the officer who killed Good, Jonathan Ross.
Amy Fischer, the director for refugee and migrant rights with Amnesty International US, has condemned the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, saying in a statement issued yesterday that it was “not an isolated incident”.
Fischer said:
Today’s fatal shooting by U.S. Border Patrol agents on the streets of Minneapolis is the latest devastating reminder that ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are not making our communities safer. Instead, they are operating with impunity, using deadly force in broad daylight, terrorizing neighborhoods, and tearing young children from their families.
This killing is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader pattern in which ICE, with its paramilitary-style operations, has been unleashed to carry out violent and abusive enforcement and detention practices with little oversight or accountability. From deadly street operations to the torture, neglect and other abuses documented in immigrant detention facilities, ICE has repeatedly violated human rights while facing virtually no consequences. In fact, the House voted Thursday to increase its funding by billions of dollars.
How many more people must die before U.S. leaders act? At a moment when lives are being taken and communities are demanding answers, Congress must stop looking away. The U.S. Senate faces an urgent choice in the coming days: continue pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into a lawless agency that endangers lives with impunity or take meaningful action to rein in ICE and stop funding its abuses.
Amnesty International calls on Congress to reject any additional funding for ICE and to immediately take steps to hold ICE accountable for the deaths and other human rights violations it has caused, and to end these deadly enforcement practices. Not one more life sould be lost. Not one more dime should be spent enabling this horror.”
California governor calls for homeland security secretary to resign
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has called for Kristi Noem to resign from her role as homeland security secretary and for senior US border patrol official Gregory Bovino, who has spearheaded aggressive immigration operations across the country, to be fired.
Noem has said Alex Pretti “approached US border patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun”, a claim that is undermined by video evidence and witness testimony. Bovino also told reporters that Pretti had approached border patrol agents with the same gun.
In a post on X, Newsom, a frontrunner among Democratic candidates for president in 2028, said:
Kristi Noem must RESIGN. Greg Bovino must be FIRED. Suspend the LAWLESS mass deportation raids nationwide NOW – ICE is no longer just deporting dangerous criminals. Send the border patrol back to the border. End the militarization of ICE + the sick racial profiling.
End the perverse cash incentives that are bounties to perpetrate Trump’s cruel agenda. Require thorough, real background checks for everyone, and 2+ years of training before even setting foot in the field. INVESTIGATE and PROSECUTE every single federal agent who is breaking the law.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called out Trump administration officials for justifying Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents because he was in legal possession of a firearm.
In criticising Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, Ocasio-Cortez alluded to the broad conservative support for Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, some six years ago during racial justice protests.
Ocasio-Cortez said:
How rich is it that she is saying showing up to the scene of a protest with a legally owned weapon should be grounds for a person’s death, execution at the hands of the state, by the same party and the same administration that praises Kyle Rittenhouse.
Earlier on Saturday, Noem had said:
I don’t know any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition, rather than a sign. This is a violent riot. We have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.
There is no evidence that Pretti had any intention of attacking law enforcement officers. Video of the incident also undermines that the shooting of Pretti was in self-defence.
A senior Republic senator has said the credibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security are in the balance after what happened in Minneapolis and has called for a full inquiry.
Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy posted on X:
The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing. The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth.
Further to the last post, fellow actress Natalie Portman got emotional as she described her feelings over a “horrible day”.
“What is happening in our country is just obscene,” she said in Park City, where she was promoting the film The Gallerist.
What Trump and [homeland security secretary] Kristi Noem and ICE are doing to our citizens and to undocumented people is outrageous and needs to end.
Hollywood stars have used red carpet appearances at the Sundance film festival to denounce the killing of American citizen Alex Pretti after his fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Actor and director Olivia Wilde said on Saturday that the death of a second protester in just three weeks at the hands of federal agents was “unfathomable”, Agence France-Presse is reporting.
“I can’t believe that we’re watching people get murdered in the street,” she said.
These brave Americans who have stepped out to protest the injustice of these ICE quote/unquote ‘officers,’ and watching them be murdered – it’s unfathomable. We cannot normalise it.
Wilde – who wore an “ICE OUT” badge and was in Park City, Utah, for the premiere of the film The Invite – said the US government violence against people exercising their right to free expression was “un-American”.
We may have a government that is somehow trying to make excuses for it and legitimise it, but we [Americans] don’t.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the outcry across the US following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old American citizen Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, the second such killing there in less than three weeks.
Pretti’s family released a statement on Saturday evening in which they said they were “heartbroken but also very angry” after Donald Trump and his officials referred to Pretti as a “gunman” who had approached US border patrol officers.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the family statement said. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
Two witnesses to the killing have said in sworn testimony that the intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.
One witness, who filmed the shooting from right behind Pretti, said federal agents tackled him after he came to help someone whom they had pushed to the ground.
Footage from the scene supports the assertion that Pretti is holding a phone, not a gun, when he was tackled and shot.
In the aftermath of the killing, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an image of a handgun, which Donald Trump referred to as “the gunman’s gun” in a social media post. Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, said at a briefing that Pretti had “approached US border patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun”. Greg Bovino, a senior border patrol commander, said: “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Here are some of the latest developments:
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Minnesota federal judge Eric Tostrud ordered federal agencies to preserve evidence related to Pretti’s death. Tostrud’s ruling marked a response to Minnesota officials’ lawsuit on Saturday alleging that federal officials were stymying investigative efforts.
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Thousands of protesters gathered in cities including Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. They braved extreme cold to shout slogans including: “Say it once, say it twice, we will not put up with ICE!”
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The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said his party would block a funding package next week if it included money for the DHS, the department responsible for ICE. “What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling – and unacceptable in any American city,” the New York senator said. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”
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US vice-president JD Vance said on X, without providing evidence for his claims, that “this level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”
