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.
Republican US senator Bill Cassidy said the “credibility” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were “at stake”.
“There must be a full joint federal and state investigation,” Cassidy wrote in a post on X. “We can trust the American people with the truth.”
Minnesota US senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, told NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump administration had described the shooting, which is shown in several eyewitness videos circulating widely on social media, “in ways that simply aren’t true”.
“I just keep thinking, your eyes don’t lie,” Klobuchar said. “Law enforcement is based on trust, and we have had a total breakdown of trust.”
She called for a “transparent” investigation into the shooting and called for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agents to leave the state.
“They are making us less safe, not more safe,” Klobuchar said, after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot Renee Nicole Good to death on 7 January and border patrol officers fatally shot Pretti on Saturday.
Other Democrat lawmakers, including US House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, also issued calls for federal immigration authorities to leave Minnesota. They urged Senate Democrats to vote against funding the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and border patrol, during budget negotiations.
“We have a responsibility to protect Americans from tyranny,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on X.
Meanwhile, Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan, called for “the truth” to be told about their son.
“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said. “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.”
The family’s statement came after US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem made the observable false claim that Pretti brandished a gun before agents fired “defensive shots” at him. None of the ubiquitous video evidence shows Pretti brandishing a gun.
Late Saturday, a federal judge issued an order blocking the Trump administration from “destroying or altering evidence” related to Pretti’s killing, after Minnesota officials sued DHS.
The Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, said the suit demanded “a full, impartial, and transparent investigation into [Pretti’s] fatal shooting at the hands of DHS agents [that] is non-negotiable”.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara, meanwhile, said information about what led up to the shooting was limited. As protests erupted in Minneapolis on Saturday, federal officers impeded state investigators from accessing the scene of Pretti’s killing.
Trump responded to Pretti’s shooting with his typical combativeness. The Republican president accused Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey – his fellow Democrat – of “inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous and arrogant rhetoric”.
Vice-President JD Vance for his part claimed events in Minneapolis were “engineered chaos” resulting from “far-left agitators, working with local authorities”.
ICE and border patrols officials were scheduled to hold a news briefing early Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis.
