For the second time in three weeks, local and state authorities in Minnesota say they have been impeded from investigating how federal agents shot and killed someone, cutting off access to crucial evidence and basic facts.
In both cases, Minnesota officials said they sought to have their Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which typically takes the lead in police shootings, work in partnership with the federal government.
Yet the Department of Homeland Security has blocked local investigators from reviewing evidence gathered following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, both Minneapolis residents and U.S. citizens.
Federal authorities shut down an early effort to collaboratively investigate the agent who killed Ms. Good and said that they would handle any investigation into the killing of Mr. Pretti.
“We’re in uncharted territory here,” said Drew Evans, the superintendent of the B.C.A.
On Saturday, in the chaotic hours after federal agents killed Mr. Pretti, state officials resorted to a pair of highly unconventional moves in a bid to gain access to the scene and evidence.
They obtained a judicial search warrant granting them access to the sidewalk where Mr. Pretti, 37, was shot multiple times after a confrontation with Border Patrol agents. And they sought and received an emergency court order from a federal judge who barred federal officials from destroying evidence from the case.
Late Saturday, a federal judge in Minnesota issued a temporary restraining order barring federal officials “from destroying or altering evidence related to the fatal shooting involving federal officers” earlier in the day.
Still, a day after the shooting, local officials remained shut out of the investigation — lacking facts as basic as the identity of the federal agents who shot Mr. Pretti.
The standoff over the investigations into both killings — which were each documented in videos shot from multiple angles — was a break from the typical, cooperation seen between state and federal authorities.
“What you have now is a sense that immigration agents are able to operate with impunity because there is no accountability and no prospect of accountability for these horrific acts,” said Vanita Gupta, who served as associate attorney general in the Biden administration. “That is an incredibly dangerous place for this country to be in.”
The shooting of Mr. Pretti on Saturday morning happened amid escalating tensions over the federal government’s deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota, which began late last year. The Trump administration has called the operation — which has been met with strong local resistance — a necessary intervention to round up criminals who are in the country illegally. It has also cited concerns about fraud in safety net programs in the state.
So far this month, federal agents involved in the immigration operation, called Metro Surge, have shot three people, including Ms. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was killed in her S.U.V. on Jan. 7 as she appeared to be steering away from federal agents during a tense confrontation. A federal agent also shot, but did not kill, a Venezuelan man on Jan. 14.
Fatal shootings by federal agents in the line of duty are rare. As investigators review evidence, they seek to answer a basic question: whether an agent had a “reasonable belief” that the person who was shot posed “an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the agent or another person.”
Officials from the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights and experts at the F.B.I. generally play a leading role in making that determination, which dictates whether a prosecution is warranted. Separately, federal law enforcement agencies typically conduct an administrative review to establish whether an agent followed their training and protocols.
Joint investigations involving federal and state agencies often involve a degree of tension, said J. Thomas Manger, the former chief of the United States Capitol Police, who previously led two large police departments in suburban Washington, D.C.
“But it would always be a very cooperative effort where people communicate,” said Mr. Manger, who has been involved in many use-of-force investigations.
After Ms. Good was killed, as protesters took to the streets, top officials at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis set out to launch an investigation into the shooting in partnership with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Joseph H. Thompson, a career federal prosecutor who was running the office the day Ms. Good was killed, called on the Department of Homeland Security to halt immigration enforcement operations while the F.B.I. and state investigators began gathering evidence, according to an email he sent to colleagues that morning.
Yet, shortly after Mr. Thompson set out to launch a conventional review of Ms. Good’s killing, senior officials in the Trump administration overruled him on two fronts.
They sent immigration agents back into the streets of Minneapolis that same day and they barred the B.C.A. from the investigation.
Senior Trump administration officials were quick to claim that the agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, acted properly. They also labeled Ms. Good — who along with her partner, Becca, had been among the hundreds of Minneapolis residents who have protested immigration raids — a domestic terrorist. A similar refrain was put forward by federal officials on Saturday with regard to Mr. Pretti.
In the days after the shooting of Ms. Good, the Justice Department pushed for a criminal investigation into her partner, Becca, focusing on links to groups of civilians that have documented and challenged the work of immigration agents. Mr. Thompson and five fellow career prosecutors resigned in protest on Jan. 13.
Tracee Mergen, a supervisor at the F.B.I. field office in Minneapolis who had sought to investigate the shooting, also resigned after supervisors opted not to investigate the case as a civil rights matter.
On Saturday, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement that an investigation into the killing of Mr. Pretti was underway. But he and other senior administration officials have provided virtually no details about what that review would entail and they have sought to cast blame on civilians and local Democratic leaders who have been protesting the immigration operation.
“The Department of Justice will continue to hold those breaking federal law accountable, including those who harass and violently attack law enforcement in the name of protest,” Mr. Blanche said in a statement on social media that was paired with one in which President Trump implied, without evidence, that Mr. Pretti posed a threat to agents.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota called the ongoing immigration crackdown a “campaign of organized brutality.”
“Minnesota’s justice system will have the last word,” he said.
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the manner in which Mr. Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis and other local officials have pushed back on immigration operations in their state.
Among those the Justice Department is investigating are Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Mary Moriarty, the elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis.
Both Mr. Ellison and Ms. Moriarty are resorting to highly unusual means to investigate whether the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti warrant filing criminal charges against the federal agents involved. Ms. Moriarty’s office has established online portals where people can submit videos and other forms of evidence related to both killings.
“Federal agents are not above the law, and Alex Pretti is certainly not beneath it,” Mr. Ellison said. “A full, impartial and transparent investigation into his fatal shooting at the hands of D.H.S. agents is nonnegotiable.”
While the name of the agent who killed Ms. Good quickly came to light, it has still not been released by federal authorities. State officials said they have not learned the identities of the agents who shot Mr. Pretti.
Beyond their lack of such basic facts and evidence that is normally analyzed in use-of-force cases, local prosecutors face formidable procedural challenges. Even if a federal agent were to be charged in one of the shootings, the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution gives federal officials the ability to move the case to federal court.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
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