A second fatal shooting in Minneapolis again led tensions to boil over as local, state and national leaders weighed in with conflicting accounts of how the situation unfolded
Videos quickly emerged Saturday showing the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis protester by a Border Patrol agent, with Democratic leaders in Minnesota saying the footage showed the deadly encounter was the result of untrained federal officers overreacting and the Trump administration saying the man provoked the violence.
It was the second fatal shooting in Minneapolis by federal immigration authorities this month. The first, on Jan. 7, involved Renee Good. It also was captured on videos and produced a similar schism among political leaders.
On Saturday, at around 9 a.m., a Border Patrol agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti after a roughly 30-second scuffle. The Trump administration said shots were fired “defensively » against Pretti, who federal authorities said had a semiautomatic handgun and was “violently » resisting officers.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said he watched one of several videos, said he saw “more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents, shooting him to death. » Frey has said Minneapolis and St. Paul are being “invaded” by the administration’s largest immigration crackdown, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti attacked officers, and Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said he wanted to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” In posts on X, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti « a would-be assassin.
