ICE arrests dropped nearly 12% nationwide after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens who were shot dead by immigration officers in Minneapolis, according to a new report.
The Associated Press published an analysis based on ICE arrest records provided to UC Berkeley's Deportation Data Project. It found that arrests averaged 7,369 per week in the five weeks after White House border czar Tom Homan announced a drawdown in Minnesota. That was down from 8,347 weekly arrests in the previous five weeks. Arrests had peaked in December at nearly 40,000 nationwide and remained nearly as high in January.
Homan announced the drawdown in early February after the Minneapolis killings and mounting complaints from local officials and residents. The numbers, however, do not show a uniform retreat nationwide.
AP found that arrests fell sharply in large states, including Minnesota and Texas, but rose in Kentucky, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida. In Kentucky, weekly arrests more than doubled to 86 by early March, according to the analysis.
AP found that 46% of those arrested in the five weeks before Feb. 4 had no criminal charges or convictions. That figure dropped to 41% in the five weeks after Homan's drawdown announcement, still a substantial share of overall arrests.
The Minneapolis operation had already come under legal scrutiny before the broader arrest decline. In February, the Justice Department moved to drop charges against two men accused of assaulting ICE officers after a January shooting involving a Venezuelan immigrant. A federal prosecutor said newly discovered evidence was "materially inconsistent with the allegations." An FBI affidavit reportedly said officers had scanned a license plate registered to someone else, chased the wrong person, and that the alleged attackers were fleeing when an officer fired.
Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen who was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents on January 24, during a federal immigration enforcement operation in south Minneapolis. Video of the incident appears to show Pretti standing between an agent and a woman, the agent pushed to the ground before he is pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground by six officers, and shot.
The official DHS account asserted that Pretti approached agents while armed with a handgun and resisted efforts to disarm him, prompting the use of lethal force. According to the DHS report, a Border Patrol agent shouted that Pretti had a gun before he and another agent discharged their firearms.
However, bystander videos circulating on social media and reviewed by news organizations appear to show Pretti holding only a phone during part of the confrontation, raising questions about whether he posed an immediate threat at the moment shots were fired.
Video of Good's shooting showed her in a dark red Honda SUV being approached by ICE officers as she was told to get out of her vehicle. The officers walk up to her car and try to open the driver's side door before the woman tries to take off, grazing another officer, who opens fire on the driver.
Key members of the Trump administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, have passionately reiterated that they believe the ICE officer who shot Good was acting in self-defense and have sought to paint her as a "deranged leftist" who intended to run him over. However, after the shootings, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi have resigned or been removed from their posts.
