A Republican who ended his campaign for governor of Minnesota over Donald Trump’s deadly immigration operation in his state blasted the administration’s actions as “antithetical to everything our country is about.”
Law enforcement attorney Chris Madel was polling in the top three of a crowded primary field when he announced Monday he was ending his run because he could not be a member of a party that would seek “retribution” against the citizens of Minnesota.
Madel had provided legal advice to the ICE agent who shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
But after the killing of Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday at the hands of Border Patrol agents, Madel said he needed to be able to look his daughters in the eye and tell them he did what he thought was right.
Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett, Madel criticized Trump for declaring a “day of reckoning and retribution” in Minnesota after Good’s death. Instead of de-escalating tensions after the killing, the president sent thousands more immigration agents into the state.
Madel said U.S. citizens of color were hiding in their homes in Minnesota and carrying their passports “because they’re afraid of picked up by the federal government.”
“That is antithetical to everything our country is about. Literally everything,” he said. “And I want my daughters to know that I stood up and said, ‘No.’”
America is a “nation of immigrants,” he added, saying he wants his daughters to know that “it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is, it doesn’t matter where you came from. We need to treat everybody with a measure of humanity, and that’s what it really means to be an American.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The longtime attorney also described speaking to Asian and Hispanic off-duty law enforcement who were pulled over by immigration agents for supposedly speeding, even though ICE doesn’t have the authority to pull people over for speeding.
The officers complied with the stops anyway because they felt they had no choice if they wanted to avoid a potentially dangerous situation, Madel said.
“It’s wrong,” he said. “One of these officers was driving his little sister to school. You can’t put your little sister in a situation like that and try to get combative and tell them what they’re doing is the wrong thing.”
Madel also had a message for FBI Director Kash Patel and other members of the administration who have said Pretti was breaking the law and creating a dangerous situation by carrying a concealed gun.
Video shows that Pretti never brandished the gun, which he had a permit for, and that a Border Patrol agent took it from him before shooting him.
“Just going outside with a gun does not mean that you can get shot by federal law enforcement officers,” Madel said. “It makes me want to kind of tap the microphone and say, ‘Is this on? Is anybody listening here?’”
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