Minneapolis: Alex Pretti's family slams US officials' 'lies'

Two fatal ICE-related shooting deaths have shaken Minneapolis and left the city on edge.

Click here to read more on how residents of Minnesota's most-populous city are responding to the federal immigration crackdown.

US President Donald Trump has told the Wall Street Journal that his administration is "reviewing everything and ⁠will ‍come out with a determination" about the deadly shooting of US citizen Alex Pretti by federal agents.

Senior figures from the federal government, including Trump, have blamed Saturday's shooting on Pretti himself, as well as local and state authorities for failing to quell the unrest and for not supporting the federal immigration clampdown.

Trump and his administration have insisted that Pretti assaulted federal agents, who fired "defensive shots." 

Those claims contradict video footage of the incident, which shows Pretti being shot multiple times after he had been restrained by several officers and had his weapon — which he was permitted to carry — taken off him.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Saturday called for local and state authorities to lead the investigation into the shooting, warning that the federal government "cannot be trusted" to lead the probe.

Federal authorities barred local and state police from investigating the fatal shooting of Renee Good, also in Minneapolis, on January 7.

During the Wall Street Journal interview published on Sunday, Trump also said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be withdrawn from Minneapolis, where they were deployed in their thousands this month to detain alleged criminal immigrants.

"At some point we will leave. We've done, they've ‍done a phenomenal job," Trump said, without providing a timeline.

Former US president Bill Clinton has urged Americans to "stand up" and "speak out" against the "horrible scenes" in Minneapolis, warning that US democracy is at stake.

Two US citizens have been killed by federal agents in the city in under three weeks, with the latest death coming on Saturday when ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot multiple times during a confrontation with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.

The CBP agents were assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis.

The deaths come amid widespread protests in Minnesota against the sweeping federal crackdown ordered by the Trump administration, which has deployed thousands of ICE and CBP agents to the state to detain and deport alleged criminal immigrants.

In a statement posted on X, the veteran Democrat, who served as President from 1993 to 2001, said: "Peaceful protesters and citizens exercising their constitutional right to observe and document law enforcement have been arrested, beaten, teargassed, and most searingly, in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot and killed."

Clinton also condemned the Trump administration for portraying Pretti and Good as a "would-be assassin" and a "domestic terrorist", respectively, despite strong video evidence to the contrary.

"To make matters even worse, at every turn, the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we have seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics," Clinton said.

"It is up to all of us who believe in the promise of American democracy to stand up, speak out, and show that our nation still belongs to We the People," the former president said.

Former US President Barack Obama has condemned the death of US citizen Alex Pettri during an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis on Saturday.

In a statement on X, Obama called it a “heartbreaking tragedy.”

The former president said the incident "should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault." 

Obama urged the Trump administration to work with city and state officials "to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals."

"This has to stop," Obama said. 

Talking to DW, legal expert Claire Finkelstein says that Alex Pretti was "shot in the back, at point blank range, when he was already subdued," contradicting the narrative that law enforcement officers acted in self-defense.

Watch the rest of our interview here: 

On Sunday, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, said she felt grief for the parents of Alex Pretti.

When asked what she would say to Pretti's parents, Noem said: "Just that I'm grieved for them."

"I truly am. I can't even imagine losing a child," she told Fox News' "The Sunday Briefing."

The comments had a notably different tone that Noem's statement on Saturday, when she described Pretti's actions as "domestic terrorism."

"When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism," Noem said during a news conference in Washington, DC.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Stephen Miller also made similar remarks online, calling Pretti a "would-be assassin."

"A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response?" Miller wrote on X.

The family of Alex Pretti on Sunday released a statement in which they expressed their grief and anger over his killing, saying they were "heartbroken" and describing Pretti as a "kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital," adding, "Alex wanted to make a difference in this world."

The Trump administration, as was the case in the January 7 killing of unarmed US citizen Renee Good by ICE officers, has asserted that Pretti was a left-wing radical bent on ambushing and killing as many officers as possible. The authorities have not provided evidence to back the claim.

In turn, the family said Pretti's final act was "to protect a woman" who was being manhandled by ICE agents.

"The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting," they said.

"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." 

Despite these references to ICE, Pretti was in fact shot by a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent. This agency is typically active in areas close to the border, but has been working increasingly close with its sister agency, ICE, under the current Trump administration, leading to both agencies being deployed in Minneapolis.

The family ended its statement with a plea: "Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man."

The man shot by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday, 37-year-old US citizen Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive care unit nurse at a local veteran affairs hospital, according to his family and colleagues.

A hospital colleague of Pretti's, Dimitri Drekonja, who heads the Infectious Diseases Section, called him "a good kind person who lived to help."

In a post on the Bluesky social media platform, he said Pretti worked "to support critically ill Veterans." 

Pretti's father was cited by The Associated Press as saying that his son had been deeply disturbed by the actions of federal immigration officials in Minneapolis, and had taken part in anti-ICE protests triggered by the death of another US citizen, Renee Good, in the city at the hands of a federal officer on January 7.

"He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests," Michael Pretti said.

AP's report said he was born in Illinois, and was an avid lover of outdoor life.

His family saying his contact with law enforcement had previously been limited to a handful of traffic tickets.

Correction: A previous version of this entry stated that Pretti was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, rather than a Border Patrol officer. This has now been corrected. We apologize for the error.

Several Democratic senators have said they will not pass upcoming federal government spending bills after the shooting of a second US citizen in Minneapolis by federal agents, meaning that a government shutdown next week has become increasingly likely.

The current funding for large parts of the federal government expires on January 31.

The funding, which would go partly to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Pentagon, has been passed by the Republican-led House of Representatives through September but will require Democratic support to get through the 100-member Senate with the required majority of 60 votes. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Saturday that "Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included."

Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto from the state of Nevada was one of those who said they would vote against the funding for the DHS.

She accused the Trump administration and DHS chief Kristi Noem of "putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability."

Another Democratic senator, Mark Warner of Virginia, also said he would not approve the DHS funding following the shooting death in Minneapolis. 

"I cannot and will not vote to fund DHS while this administration continues these violent federal takeovers of our cities," he wrote on a post on X.

The last government shutdown, the longest in US history at 43 days, ended only in November.

Such shutdowns mean that hundreds of thousands of federal employees are furloughed, with only those deemed essential being asked to work on without pay.

The killing of a 37-year-old Minneapolis nurse named Alex Pretti on Saturday comes just three weeks after another Minnesota resident, 37-year-old Renee Good, was also shot and killed by a federal agent.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi has echoed the White House's line that Minnesota's authorities and their immigration policies have to do with the shooting that killed a Minneapolis man, Alex Pretti.

Speaking during an interview with Fox News, Bondi said the unrest in the city was "because you have a mayor, you have a governor who has declared Minneapolis a 'sanctuary city.'"

A sanctuary city is a loosely defined term referring to a municipality that limits its cooperation with the federal government in enforcing immigration law.

Proponents of the approach say sanctuary cities help build community trust and improve public safety, while critics argue that they undermine federal law and encourage illegal immigration. 

Bondi claimed that Minnesota was stopping ICE from detaining immigrants who have allegedly been charged with violent crimes.

What Pam Bondi said

"Federal law enforcement agents are doing heroic work to remove the worst of the worst in Minnesota — and they’re only there in the first place because of [Minnesota Governor Tim] Walz, [Minnesota Attorney General Keith] Ellison, and [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob] Frey’s dangerous sanctuary policies," Bondi posted on X. 

She aaccused the state's leaders of "creating the conditions for violence against law enforcement." "NOTHING will stop us from enforcing the law — and NOTHING will stop President Trump from protecting the good people of Minnesota," Bondi said.

During the interview with Fox News, Bondi said the Justice Department had sent a "very strong letter" to Walz, in which she told him he "better support President Trump, he better support the men and women in law enforcement, because if he doesn't, we are." 

 

This is the third shooting incident in Minnesota involving federal immigration agents in less than three weeks:

• Saturday's shooting occurred just blocks from where Renee Good was killed on January 7
• The White House labeled Good, a mother and a poet with no criminal record, a 'domestic terrorist' who was shot because she tried to hit a federal officer with her vehicle
• Minnesota and Minneapolis authorities have strongly rejected the White House's version of events
• Good's shooting further raised tensions in the state amid the crackdown by federal immigration authorities
• There have been daily clashes between protesters and law enforcement in Minnesota since Good was killed
• On January 15, a federal officer shot a person in the leg during an attempted arrest
• The Department of Homeland Security said the officer had fired the shot 'fearing for his life and safety' as he was being attacked with a shovel and a broom handle

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the state's National Guard to assist local  police amid growing protests in the city after the fatal shooting of a man by immigration agents.

National Guard troops will be deployed to the site of the shooting in Minneapolis and the city's federal building.

In a post on X, Minneapolis authorities said the Guard was to be deployed as local police resources "are already stretched thin because of public safety disruptions federal immigration agents have caused."

Minneapolis city authorities added that Guard troops would wear neon vests to "distinguish them from other agencies."

Local officials said the deployment comes "at the request" of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

 

The governor of the state of Maine, Janet Mills, issued a statement saying she is "appalled and heartbroken" by "yet another killing at the hands of federal immigration enforcement."

Mills said President Donald Trump's and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem's "weaponization of federal law enforcement" is both a "grave violation of the Constitution" as well as a "threat to the lives of law-abiding people in the cities and states they occupy, including Maine."

The DHS said Friday that ICE agents had arrested over 100 "illegal aliens" since a federal immigration crackdown began three days earlier in the state.

In her statement, Mills said she had requested a meeting with Trump to demand the withdrawal of "these untrained and reckless ICE agents in Maine and across the country who are stoking fear in communities, arresting legally present people, including law enforcement officials, and who pose a grave danger to public safety."

She also urged Congress to cut off funding for ICE and to "immediately" bring Noem before a public hearing.

Hundreds of people blocked off the intersection where the shooting happened, around a makeshift memorial for the man killed by a border patrol agent earlier this morning.