Two federal officers fired the shots that killed Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis ICU nurse shot during an immigration enforcement operation—this according to a notification the Department of Homeland Security just sent to Congress.
The notification obtained by the Associated Press confirms what many suspected: one Border Patrol officer fired his Glock, and one Customs and Border Protection officer fired his.
THE DETAILS: Investigators from CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility pieced this together using body-worn camera footage and agency documentation. The agency is legally required to report certain deaths involving its agents to Congress, so here we are.
According to the notice, officers attempted to take Pretti into custody and he “resisted,” leading to a struggle. During that struggle, a Border Patrol agent yelled “He’s got a gun!” multiple times.
That’s the official version, anyway.
BUT BUT BUT: Pretti is the second U.S. citizen killed by federal forces in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The city has become ground zero for both the enforcement surge and the massive protests against it.
Trump has dismissed the protesters as “paid agitators and insurrectionists”—a claim that PolitiFact has fact-checked. Meanwhile, the administration has been shuffling federal officials in Minnesota, with Trump suggesting the shakeup might “de-escalate” things.
WHY IT MATTERS: An American citizen—a nurse who worked in an ICU, caring for people at their most vulnerable—is dead. Two federal officers pulled the trigger. And the investigation into what happened is being conducted by… the same agency whose officers killed him.
The notification to Congress is a bureaucratic requirement, not accountability. It tells us who fired but not why, not whether it was justified, not whether Pretti actually had a gun or whether officers made a fatal mistake.
What we know for certain: federal immigration enforcement has now killed two U.S. citizens in one American city. And the people investigating are the same ones doing the killing.