The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse who was killed in Minneapolis last weekend by federal immigration agents, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said on Friday.
The announcement marked a significant reversal in the department’s approach to Mr. Pretti’s killing, suggesting that after a week of lacerating criticism, it had decided to handle the high-profile incident in a manner more in keeping with how investigators have traditionally dealt with fatal shootings by law-enforcement officers.
But even as Mr. Blanche disclosed the existence of the inquiry, he sought to downplay it.
“I don’t want to overstate what is happening,” he said. “I don’t want the takeaway to be there is some massive civil rights investigation. I would describe it as a standard investigation by the F.B.I.”
Still, all of this sounded quite different from the Trump administration’s stance at the beginning of the week.
On Monday, for instance, officials revealed in court papers that the inquiry into the shooting would be led by investigators from the Department of Homeland Security and would focus not on the broad question of whether immigration agents had deprived Mr. Pretti of his civil rights in the incident, but rather on the narrower issue of whether the agents’ use of force had violated internal protocols and training standards.
The court papers also said Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, would take the lead in the inquiry, assisted by both Customs and Border Protection and the F.B.I.
But on Friday, a Homeland Security spokesperson said that the bureau would now take the lead in the inquiry and H.S.I. would play a secondary role.
Mr. Blanche also asserted that the F.B.I. would be in charge of the investigation, along with lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
“We are looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day,” he said.
Mr. Blanche’s remarks about the investigation came at a news conference where the central topic was the release of millions of pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
But facing a series of questions from reporters, he pivoted to the department’s scattershot handling of events in Minnesota. He declined to say much about new federal charges filed on Friday against the independent journalist Don Lemon and several others in connection with a demonstration this month at a church service in St. Paul.
He also brushed aside questions about the Justice Department’s refusal to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good while she was behind the wheel of her car in Minneapolis, two weeks before Mr. Pretti was killed.
“Cases are handled differently by this department depending on the circumstances,” Mr. Blanche said.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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