Obamas say Alex Pretti killing a ‘tragedy’ as calls mount for full investigation
Pressure mounted on Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday to fully investigate the previous day’s killing by federal immigration officers of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Calls for an investigation have come from all sides of the political divide after video analysis showed officers had removed from Pretti a handgun he was reportedly permitted to carry – and which he was not handling – before fatally shooting him.
Former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, called the killing “a heartbreaking tragedy” and “a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault”.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Obamas said federal law enforcement and immigration agents were not operating in a lawful or accountable way in Minnesota.
“For weeks now people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city,” they said. The former president and former first lady said these tactics had now resulted in the fatal shootings of two US citizens – Pretti and Renee Good, both in Minneapolis. Yet, they said, Trump and other administration officials appeared eager to escalate the rhetoric before an investigation had been undertaken – and despite the fact that they “appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence”.
The Obamas called on Americans to support the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country.
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Edward Helmore and Joseph Gedeon, here:
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Tim Walz urges Trump to remove agents from Minnesota: ‘You can end this’
Minnesota governor Tim Walz appealed to Donald Trump to withdraw federal agents from Minnesota on Sunday, a day after US border patrol officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who was monitoring the immigration crackdown.
“What’s the plan, Donald Trump?” Walz asked at a news conference. “What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?”
“President Trump, you can end this today. Pull these folks back; do humane, focused, effective immigration control – you’ve got the support of all of us to do that,” Walz said. “Please show some decency. Pull these folks out”.
Walz, who is not seeking re-election this year, offered an impassioned plea to the US public, many of whom have been caught between supporting immigration control and opposing actions of its enforcement under the Trump administration in the interior…
“Which side do you want to be on?” Walz asked. “The side of an all-powerful federal government that could kill, injure, menace and kidnap its citizens off the streets, or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such government,” referring to Pretti.
You can read the full story here:
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Trump says his administration is 'reviewing everything' after Pretti killing
Donald Trump, under pressure to pursue a wide-ranging, independent investigation into the second Minneapolis killing by federal agents in a matter of weeks and withdraw ICE agents from the Minneapolis area, spoke to the Wall Street Journal in a five minute phone interview on Sunday.
The president was reportedly asked twice whether the federal agent who killed Pretti had acted appropriately. He responded: “We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”
He also told the newspaper: “I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it.” He added: “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.” Video recorded by witnesses to the killing of Pretti shows the 37-year-old registered nurse was holding a phone, not a gun, when he was tackled and shot, directly contradicting the claims of senior Trump administration officials that he threatened to “massacre” officers.
Trump also signalled in the interview that he would eventually withdraw agents from Minneapolis, though he did not give a timeframe. He told the WSJ: “At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job.” “We’ll leave a different group of people there for the financial fraud,” Trump said.
The Trump administration has targeted Minnesota over the past year over allegations of fraud, specifically going after the state’s Somali population, with the president engaging in explicitly racist tirades. About 84,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and most of them are US citizens or legal residents. Trump has used a fraud scandal around the theft of federal funds for social-welfare programs in Minnesota to justify sending agents into the state, many of them from ICE.
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Republicans call for investigation after Pretti killing
A growing number of Republicans are pressing for a deeper investigation into federal immigration tactics in Minnesota after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti – a sign that the Trump administration’s accounting of events may face bipartisan scrutiny.
The Republican chairman of the House homeland security committee, Andrew Garbarino, has sought testimony from leaders at ICE, Customs and Border Protection and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, saying “my top priority remains keeping Americans safe”, the Associated Press is reporting.
A host of other congressional Republicans have pressed for more information, including representative Michael McCaul of Texas and senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Their statements, in addition to concern expressed from several Republican governors, reflects a party struggling with how to respond to federal agents’ killing of Pretti.
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Alex Pretti’s family released a statement on Saturday evening in which they said they were “heartbroken but also very angry” after the US president, 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 Pretti was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday. One witness said federal agents tackled him after he came to help someone whom they had pushed to the ground.
The Trump administration’s unfounded claims about what happened are also directly undermined by the publicly available video. The homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti was shot because he was “brandishing” a gun.
Widely circulated video showed half a dozen officers taking Pretti – who had a phone, not a gun, visibly in his hand – to the ground after spraying him with a chemical agent.
You can read more about how Trump officials are continuing to push lies about Pretti’s killing in this analysis piece, despite video evidence showing exactly what happened on Saturday.
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Judge set to hear arguments on Minnesota's immigration crackdown after killings by federal agents
We are restarting our live coverage in the aftermath of the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis on Saturday, as pressure grows on the Trump administration to fully investigate the fatal shooting amid mounting bipartisan opposition to ICE’s presence in Minnesota.
A federal judge will hear arguments later today on whether she should halt the often brutal immigration crackdown in Minnesota that has led to the killings of two 37-year-old US citizens in under a month by government officers.
The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul sued the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, earlier this month, five days after Renee Good, a mother-of-three and prize-winning poet, was shot to death by an ICE officer, sparking outrage and protests in Minneapolis.
They are asking that US District Judge Kathleen Menendez order federal law enforcement agencies to reduce the numbers of agents in Minnesota (about 3,000) to levels before ICE launched its so-called “Operation Metro Surge” in the Minneapolis area last month.
The surge of federal agents – that roughly outnumbers the Minneapolis police force five to one – has caused terror in communities across the state, with reports of legal observers being hauled off without charge, schoolchildren teargassed and armed officers appearing at daycares, churches and mosques.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday, Democratic Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison said he and the cities filed their lawsuit because of “the unprecedented nature of this surge. It is a novel abuse of the constitution that we’re looking at right now. No one can remember a time when we’ve seen something like this.”
It wasn’t clear ahead of the hearing when the judge might rule. Justice Department attorneys have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous” and said “Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement.”
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