Federal agents in the United States have shot and killed another person in the city of Minneapolis amid an immigration crackdown, authorities said, spurring protests and new calls for President Donald Trump to immediately pull heavily armed officers out of the city.
Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters that a 37-year-old man died in hospital on Saturday after being shot multiple times. The man was a Minneapolis resident and a US citizen, O’Hara said.
The man’s parents identified him as Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse.
The deadly shooting took place amid a weeks-long deployment of immigration enforcement and other federal agents to Minneapolis, where they have been carrying out raids as part of Trump’s anti-immigration push.
It also happened amid widespread daily protests in Minneapolis since the January 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fired into her vehicle.
Federal agents also shot a Venezuelan man in a separate incident last week in the city.
“This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said during a separate news conference in Saint Paul, the state’s capital and Minneapolis’s twin city.
“It’s a campaign of organised brutality against the people of our state. And today, that campaign claimed another life,” said Walz, pledging that Minnesota would handle the investigation into the killing.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a US Border Patrol agent shot and killed a person who had a handgun and resisted attempts to be disarmed.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the agent fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.
Federal officials said the officer who shot Pretti is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran.
Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out at Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. He shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered and said: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”
The Republican president said that the Democratic governor and mayor “are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!”
‘He was a good man’
In bystander videos, Pretti can be seen standing in the street and filming agents with his cellphone.
The videos show one of the agents apparently deploying pepper spray at Pretti and other protesters. While Pretti attempts to block the spray and help other protesters, several agents wrestle him to the ground and begin striking him with blows to the head and body.
As they hold Pretti on the ground, one of the agents draws his weapon and multiple shots are fired. Pretti’s body can be seen in the street.
Bellingcat, a group of researchers and journalists who conduct open-source investigations, said footage of the shooting “appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired”.
“Two different agents are visibly firing their guns, with at least 10 shots being heard in total. Most of them are fired after a brief delay, when the man is already lying motionless on the ground,” the group said.
O’Hara, the police chief, said police believed the person was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry”.
Minnesota allows the open carrying of firearms with a permit.
Pretti’s family released a statement on Saturday evening saying they are “heartbroken but also very angry,” and calling him a kindhearted soul who wanted to make a difference in the world through his work as a nurse.
“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.”
Trump and senior members of his administration have justified the deployment of ICE and other federal officers to Minneapolis as part of the president’s pledge to carry out the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.
But residents and elected officials have condemned the Trump administration for its anti-immigration policies and said the presence of heavily armed officers on their streets is not making people safer.
Speaking during Saturday’s news conference alongside the city’s police chief, Mayor Frey denounced the Trump administration for its continued crackdown.
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummelling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” Frey said. “How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?
“How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realises that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values? How many times must local and national leaders … plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognise that this is not creating safety in our city?”
Several other local and state leaders also called on Trump to end the federal deployment after Saturday’s killing.
“To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW,” US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota, wrote on X.
Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar called the shooting “an execution” and accused Trump of transforming Minneapolis into a “war zone”.
Calls for calm
The shooting drew hundreds of protesters to the neighbourhood to confront the armed and masked agents, who deployed tear gas and flashbang grenades.
The protesters screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo”.
The situation calmed after federal agents left the area, though protesters remained on the streets for hours afterward.
Walz, the governor, said he had been in contact with the White House after the shooting. He said on X that state and local authorities were “doing everything possible to de-escalate” the situation. The City of Minneapolis meanwhile urged residents “to remain calm and avoid the immediate area” of the incident.
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Washington, DC, said the incident has further ignited tensions in Minneapolis, which she described as a “tinderbox”.
“It is very much a head-to-head between Trump and his federal authorities, and local and state authorities in Minnesota,” Zhou-Castro explained, noting that the fight has been brewing since mass protests broke out in Minneapolis after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020.
Amy Koch, a Republican political strategist and a former Republican majority leader of the Minnesota Senate, called for a clear investigation into the shooting.
“It is a very dark time, and it is intolerable. And it is absolutely imperative that leaders, both President Trump and Governor Walz, de-escalate, take a very deep tactical pause on any operations going on, and allow federal and state agencies to work together to investigate this situation, and figure out what went on, before anything else is continued,” she told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t want to see criminals here illegally. I am happy to see them deported. But that’s not what this is today,” she said.
“This is an operation that is not successful, and it needs to stop. It needs a pause, and it needs state and federal officials to work together to determine what happened and how we can move forward safely.”
Al Jazeera
