As hundreds of Minneapolis residents assembled in Whittier Park Saturday evening to demand once again that federal immigration agents leave Minnesota following the second fatal shooting of a legal observer in less than three weeks, one speaker demanded that the gathering must not simply be “another damn vigil.”
“This is a turning point,” said Edwin Torres DeSantiago of the Immigrant Defense Network.
He spoke to the crowd hours after several federal officers were filmed surrounding Alex Pretti, 37, after he attempted to help a woman one of them had pushed to the ground, and fatally shooting him.
Torres DeSantiago’s words were echoed by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which did not mince words about the agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection who have for months roamed the streets of cities including Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, arresting immigrants and US citizens and opening fire nearly two dozen times—killing at least six people including Pretti.
The federal agents recruited by the Trump administration with flyers imploring them to choose between their “homeland” and an “invasion,” said the Lemkin Institute, “are loyal agents of Nazis and white supremacists within the Republican Party. They are behaving as enemies both of the Constitution and of the American people and they must be treated as such.”
“The United States is at a crossroads: Either the American people are able to wrest power from the current fascist leaders or those leaders will continue to radicalize, using violence and terror to dismantle democracy and commit even greater mass atrocities,” said the organization. “History is clear about this.”
The warning came as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it would be investigating the shooting involving its own officers instead of the FBI. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said DHS representatives had blocked them from accessing the crime scene late Saturday, even though officials had obtained a judicial search warrant.
The bureau joined the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in filing a lawsuit to prevent the “destruction of evidence” by DHS.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to order the city’s police department to “take control of the scene of the latest deadly ICE shooting, launch an independent criminal probe, and protect peaceful protesters at the scene from ICE violence.”
“Calling for ICE to leave is not enough. This shooting happened on a city street in the jurisdiction of the Minneapolis law enforcement and they must lead an independent investigation into what appears to be another horrific, unnecessary execution of a Minneapolis resident,” said Mitchell. “ICE should immediately end its deadly and disastrous siege of Minnesota and turn over all evidence and information about this shooting and the prior shooting of Renee Good to local authorities.”
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials continued pushing a narrative which was contradicted by numerous videos of the shooting and the moments leading up to it, claiming Pretti had “approached” federal agents with a gun. Footage shows Pretti holding only a phone, not a firearm, and one of agents involved in wrestling him to the ground after he was pepper-sprayed reaches into the scuffle empty-handed and then pulls out a gun before the multiple shots were fired.
Pretti was armed with a gun that he was carrying lawfully and had a permit for, local authorities said.
Despite the video evidence, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem repeated almost verbatim the claim she made earlier this month when an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in another incident that did not match the administration’s description in footage taken by bystanders: “Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”
Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, said without any evidence soon after the shooting that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” and Trump called Pretti a “gunman.”
The shooting came days after seven Democrats in the US House joined Republicans in passing a funding bill for DHS without securing restrictions on ICE, despite growing national outrage over federal immigration agents’ operations and Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
The bill still needs to go through the Senate and is one of several funding measures that need to pass by January 30 to keep the government open.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement after Pretti was killed that “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” said Schumer. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”
Democratic senators who had been expected to support the $64.4 billion in DHS funding, which includes $10 billion for ICE, said after the shooting that they would not do so.
“I cannot and will not vote to fund DHS while this administration continues these violent federal takeovers of our cities,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).