Federal investigators are reviewing body camera footage related to the killing of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse who was fatally shot in Minneapolis on Saturday by federal agents involved in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“There is body camera footage from multiple angles, which investigators are currently reviewing,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to The New York Times on Monday.
The footage could shed new light on the killing of Mr. Pretti, who was an intensive-care nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis. Administration officials quickly branded Mr. Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” after he was killed, even as videos of the encounter contradicted their narrative and D.H.S.’s account of the events leading up to the shooting.
After Mr. Pretti was killed, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension filed a lawsuit against several federal agencies and officials, including D.H.S. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to prevent the destruction of evidence related to the killing. A federal judge in Minnesota on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order barring federal officials from destroying evidence related to the shooting.
In a memo filed Monday opposing the temporary restraining order, D.H.S. and other government agencies said that “the evidence is being preserved; nothing has been destroyed or altered.”
The evidence is being stored in a secure evidence room at the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis field office, according to the memo. The document also stated that “CBP has preserved all relevant body-worn camera footage from the incident and will do so for 75 years,” referring to Customs and Border Protection, which includes U.S. Border Patrol, one of the two main homeland security agencies involved in the immigration crackdown, alongside ICE.
Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times contradict D.H.S.’s account of Mr. Pretti’s killing. The department said the episode began after a man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and they tried to disarm him. Footage shows Mr. Pretti was holding a phone, not a gun, before agents pulled him to the ground and shot him.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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