The sister of Alex Pretti issued a statement memorializing her brother and condemning “disgusting lies” she said had been told about him since his fatal shooting by Border Patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday, as the White House deployed border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota and adopted a more measured tone in its response.
According to a copy of the statement shared by an Associated Press reporter late Monday, Micayla Pretti described her grief as “a pain no words can fully capture” and expressed a sense of exasperation. “When does this end? How many more innocent lives must be lost before we say enough?” she wrote. It was not immediately clear what falsehoods she was referring to.
Video footage of Pretti’s killing raised questions about Department of Homeland Security officials’ immediate account of the incident. The day he was shot, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino suggested Pretti had wanted to “massacre” officers. A Washington Post analysis of the incident’s footage found that agents secured a handgun from Pretti before he was shot multiple times. Local authorities said he was carrying the weapon lawfully.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, died Saturday after being shot by Border Patrol during an enforcement operation — the third person to be shot by federal immigration authorities in Minneapolis this month, and the second to be killed.
In a remarkable filing late Monday, Minnesota’s chief federal judge demanded that Todd M. Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, personally appear in court on Friday to explain what he said were repeated failures to comply with court orders amid ICE’s enforcement efforts in the state.
The order threatened possible contempt proceedings against Lyons and sets up another potential showdown between federal judges and Trump officials.
It was not clear Tuesday how Lyons would respond or whether Justice Department attorneys would seek to block the order in court.
On Monday, President Donald Trump said he would send border czar Tom Homan to take over from Bovino, who has been the face of the operation in Minneapolis and previous ones in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said late Monday, after speaking to Trump, that some federal troops would begin leaving the area on Tuesday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said separately that Trump had agreed in a phone call Monday “to look into reducing the number of federal agents” in the state. DHS did not immediately respond to an early Tuesday request for comment. Both Frey and Trump said Homan would speak with the mayor Tuesday.
“Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “It is President Trump’s hope and wish and demand for the resistance and chaos to end today.”
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