Another Minnesota shooting turns immigration crackdown into a national reckoning
Another fatal shooting in Minnesota by federal agents shows President Donald Trump’s crackdown has gone far beyond undocumented immigrants.
The surge of federal force to Minneapolis is testing long-held understandings of constitutional rights and the restraint, humanity and accountability owed to the governed by those who govern them in a democratic society.
By insisting that details of two killings that millions of Americans saw on cellphone videos did not take place, senior administration officials are fracturing reality and implying that their brazen power can be wielded with impunity.
And by prejudging and distorting the tragedy in its immediate aftermath, the officials have prejudiced an investigation they will conduct into one of the gravest events that can happen in a republic: government law enforcement killing a citizen.
A moment of national reckoning is building over the principles embedded in America’s moral and legal foundations — which will be extolled this year in celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Alex Pretti’s shooting also has more prosaic political implications. It’s the latest incident that raises questions over whether Trump, with his diminished approval ratings on most issues, has lost the public only a year into his second term. The administration’s unrepentant response is also another sign that it may be prepared to defy political fallout — even in a midterm election year — in its race to irrevocably change the US and the world.
Every sign Sunday was that the White House will not back down. But CNN reported on disquiet among Department of Homeland Security officials at the aggressive and polarizing approach of Secretary Kristi Noem. The former South Dakota governor could be vulnerable should Trump seek a new course.
Saturday’s tragedy also presented Democrats with a new dilemma on balancing fierce demands from base voters to try to thwart Trump’s strongman rule while having only limited power in Washington. The party hopes to keep attention on the president’s biggest current liability — his denial of an affordability crisis hampering working families.
In the past, Democrats have stumbled when Trump has lashed them as weak on crime and immigration and hostile to law enforcement. But the political heat is so intense that some Democratic senators are vowing to block a DHS funding bill, which could spark a partial government shutdown at the week’s end.
A tragedy that went national in a moment
The death of Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse and US citizen, on Saturday quickly flashed up in horrific, graphic detail on millions of cellphones. Once again, less than three weeks after the shooting death of Renee Good, outside federal forces gunned down a Minnesotan and deepened a national political and societal crisis.
Trump’s second term has been exhausting as the rush of events and recrimination shreds perspective about any single shock. While it’s difficult to assess the lasting significance of events in real time, there’s a growing sense that Minnesota could represent a definitional moment.
“What we’re seeing on TV, it’s causing deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability,” Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now.”
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The administration complains that Democratic local officials are not cooperating with 3,000 federal agents sent to Minnesota ostensibly to deport undocumented migrants with criminal records. It says that protesters who document agents’ activity are endangering them and breaking the law. Officials’ claims that “agitators” have joined protests may also contain some truth.
Trump on Sunday issued a series of demands on Minnesota officials and put the blame for the deaths of Pretti and Good not on aggressive federal agents, but rather on Democrats. He wrote on Truth Social the party was “putting Illegal Alien Criminals over Taxpaying, Law-Abiding Citizens, and they have created dangerous circumstances for EVERYONE involved. Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”
White House officials correctly state that one reason Trump was elected for a second term in 2024 was that Americans despaired at former President Joe Biden’s failure to secure the southern border. Some Republicans regard rhetoric from Democratic leaders such as Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as inflammatory, playing to a liberal gallery and sure to spike dangerous tensions.
But there’s no evidence voters signed up for groups of armed and masked agents roaming city streets in SUVs or for sudden escalations that have left two citizens dead. Or that they think the constitutional right to protest should be abridged by an administration that seems to have chosen a Democratic state for a power play.
Americans have also not signed off on the apparent new erosions of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search as directed in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo last week. Federal agents who have refused local law enforcement access to the scenes of shootings and administration officials who have shut down independent investigations of the deaths are also raising questions about legal safeguards over state power.
One critical political question in the coming days will be whether even those Americans who backed Trump’s hardline promises on border security will reject his imposition of ruthless federal power in deportations. It is possible that shocking incidents like Saturday’s — or the heartrending photos of the detention of a 5-year-old preschooler in Minnesota last week — will further erode his political foundation.
“President Trump closed the border, promised to get violent criminals out of our country,” Stitt told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“I think everybody agrees with that,” Stitt went on. “But now Americans are asking themselves, ‘What is the endgame? What is the solution?’ We believe in federalism and state rights. And nobody likes feds coming into their state.”
‘A wake-up call’
This specter of federal power descending from out of state — in a way that seems antithetical to America’s republican DNA — is concentrating many minds and raising the possibility that Minnesota’s plight could become a galvanizing force nationally.
A sense of a coming national moment of decision was reinforced by detailed written statements by two Democratic former presidents. In a statement Sunday, Bill Clinton said, “Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decision we make and the actions we take shape our history for years to come. This is one of them.” The 42nd president added: “It’s up to all of us who believe in the promise of American democracy to stand up, speak out and show that our nation still belongs to We the People.”
Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama wrote Sunday that the killing of Pretti is “a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
Trump’s base — which rallied to his tough immigration rhetoric in 2016 — would argue that lax border enforcement also infringed those values.
But the crackdown has become about more than immigration. Like the Pentagon’s killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean and Trump’s bid to extort Greenland from Denmark, it’s a manifestation of a White House that increasingly embraces rogue tactics and spurns due process in the interest of demonstrating its own power.
Administration reaction to Pretti’s killing recalled the character assassination, victim-blaming and distortions of the aftermath of Good’s death. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti a “would be assassin” on X. Border Patrol official Greg Bovino said the deceased man showed up to “massacre” federal agents. And Noem suggested that federal agents fired defensively at Pretti while fearing for their lives because he was armed.
In a charged political moment, it is nevertheless objectively true that these depictions are not supported on cellphone footage seen by millions of Americans. These instant artifacts of a new age when everything unfolds on social videos suggest federal agents escalated the situation with Pretti, who was filming their activity; forced him to the ground; and then fired multiple shots at him at point-blank range, apparently after he was disarmed.
On Sunday, officials continued to try to deny the visual record. “The victims are the Border Patrol agents,” Bovino told CNN’s Bash. He added, “The suspect put himself in that situation,” using a questionable description of Pretti, who did not appear to commit any crime.
Noem said, “We can’t have individuals that are impeding law enforcement operations and then showing up with guns and weapons and no ID and confronting law enforcement.” FBI Director Kash Patel said on Fox News that “you do not get to attack law enforcement officials in this country without any repercussions.”
There is no evidence so far that Pretti, who had a permit to carry the gun and was not shown on any video brandishing a weapon, was doing anything other than exercising his First and Second Amendment rights.
In emotive confrontations between law enforcement and citizens, there’s always the possibility that not every angle or dimension is captured on camera. This is why investigations are so important in killings involving agents and officers. But Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Sunday that federal officials denied access to the scene of the Pretti’s killing to the state investigative agency that probes law enforcement shootings.
Top officials including Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche promised an investigation. But it’s set to be conducted by the DHS with the help of the FBI. So, as in the case of Good’s death, the government officials who have already prejudged the killings and denied visual evidence will oversee the findings. There can be little public confidence that they will not be politically tainted.
‘Not what’s happening’
Outsiders cannot say what was in the mind of the officers involved with Pretti. But the impunity immediately offered to those who killed Good seems unlikely to have introduced any sense of restraint among their colleagues. Logic suggests the administration’s direct support for these aggressive ICE and Border Patrol tactics only makes future tragedies more likely.
The open denial of events that millions of Americans can see unfold on video, meanwhile, seems to go beyond normal hardball politics. It’s beginning to look like a president who believes he enjoys unchecked power wanting to demonstrate he can reinvent the reality of a nation he leads.
“It should freak the American public out that the Trump administration lies this easily, will lie to your face, when you can see the evidence for yourself,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on “State of the Union.” “The fact of the matter is, Minneapolis is fundamentally less safe because ICE and CBP are there.”
Murphy also argued that the violent confrontations between Minnesotans and federal officers were a feature rather than an unwanted byproduct of Trump’s policies. “They are there to cause a conflict. They are there to create mayhem. And it isn’t going to be just isolated to Minneapolis,” he said.
The question now is whether Trump’s political underpinnings will break before his method of framing alternate narratives — with the help of a compliant conservative media machine.
Trump has told many thousands of lies as president, notably in claiming the 2020 election was stolen. He offered the best explanation of this political method in July 2018, when he told supporters not to believe news reports about his trade policies. “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” he said.
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