After months of resistance, the Justice Department has shared evidence related to three shootings by immigration agents in Minnesota with state and local investigators, the county prosecutor in Minneapolis said on Monday.
The exchange of evidence, which played out quietly in recent weeks, broke an investigative logjam that had hampered state prosecutors weighing whether to bring charges in the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Both were U.S. citizens who were killed by federal agents in January during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.
State prosecutors have already filed charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in another shooting that wounded a man from Venezuela during the crackdown in Minnesota. Christian Castro, the officer charged in that shooting, was arrested in Texas and remains jailed there. He has not agreed to be extradited to Minnesota.
The shootings in Minneapolis came during a deployment of thousands of federal agents that led to widespread protests and repeated clashes between agents and residents. Outrage grew after video of the shootings refuted some of the federal government’s initial claims about what happened.
The immigration crackdown and the response to the shootings marked a nadir in state-federal relations. The Trump administration accused the Democrats who run Minnesota of obstructing immigration enforcement, while Minnesota officials described the campaign as an unlawful invasion. Longstanding relationships between state and federal law enforcement agencies broke down, with state officials largely being denied access to evidence and interviews.
Though state and local prosecutors vowed early on to look into the shootings, they said they were stymied by the lack of cooperation from federal officials, who refused to provide information as basic as the names of the agents who fired. Strongly worded letters and a federal lawsuit demanding access to evidence failed to break that impasse.
It was not immediately clear what caused that to change.
Hoang Bui, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office in Minnesota, declined to comment on Monday. Justice Department officials in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the evidence sharing and about the status of any federal investigations into the shootings. The exchange of the evidence was reported earlier by The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Minnesota prosecutors have acknowledged that they face formidable practical and legal challenges in prosecuting federal agents for on-duty conduct. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution gives federal officials broad immunity from state prosecution, but Minnesota officials say those protections are not absolute. Federal agents who are charged in state court can also seek to have the cases against them moved to federal court.
Law enforcement officers are allowed to use deadly force if they reasonably perceive an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to themselves or someone else.
The post D.O.J. Turns Over Evidence in Minnesota Shootings by Immigration Agents appeared first on New York Times.
