President Donald Trump attempted to quell growing bipartisan backlash to his immigration crackdown on Monday following a second fatal shooting by a federal agent in Minneapolis in just over two weeks.

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Trump ordered a shake-up among of top officials, announcing that his border czar, Tom Homan, would head to Minneapolis to manage Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the city.

Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who has been at the center of the aggressive surge of immigration arrests across the country in recent months, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday along with a contingent of federal agents, the Associated Press reported.

Homan is considered a proponent of targeted enforcement, while Bovino has become associated with the highly visible, often indiscriminate raids that have sparked protests, injury and death in Minneapolis and other American cities in recent months.

Trump said that Homan “has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there,” and would report directly to him.

Read more: Support for Abolishing ICE Is Surging Among Republicans

Also on Monday, Trump softened his tone towards Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey after speaking to both by phone.

Trump described both calls as “very good”, and said he and Walz were now on a “similar wavelength” regarding immigration enforcement in the city. Just two days ago, he accused the two Democratic politicians of “inciting insurrection.”

The apparent shift in tone and strategy from Trump comes as he faces mounting pressure over a spate of violence linked to his Administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent as he took part in a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. His death came just over two weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, also by a federal immigration agent. 

A city on fire

Minneapolis was already convulsed by protests over Good’s killing in the days before Pretti’s death. Minutes later, the scene of his shooting became a battleground between protesters and federal agents as the city exploded in anger again.

By Saturday evening, the shooting had developed into a political crisis for Trump. In Washington, D.C., Senate Democrats who had previously been reluctant to block funding for ICE now threatened a partial government shutdown rather than pass another spending bill that would give the agency $10 billion more in funding. Several Republicans were calling for an investigation into the shooting.

The anger was fueled not just by the shooting itself, but by the Trump Administration’s handling of its aftermath. Trump and his top officials quickly tried to pin the blame on Pretti, labelling him an instigator and suggesting he had attacked the agents who killed him, despite multiple videos clearly showing otherwise.  

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go — What is that all about?” Trump posted soon after the shooting. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in its initial statement on the killing that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and “violently resisted,” suggesting that he wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”  

At a press conference in the hours after the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Pretti wanted “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” 

Bovino claimed that Pretti had approached agents with a handgun, had “violently resisted, and intended to “massacre law enforcement.”

In several social media posts, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller described Pretti as an “assassin” and a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President J.D. Vance reposted Miller’s characterization of Pretti as an “assassin” on X.

But multiple videos of the incident, released by witnesses to the shooting in the hours after, clearly contradicted those accounts.

They show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when an agent approaches him and other protesters and squirts pepper spray in their faces. When Pretti moves to help another protester who has been sprayed, he is tackled and pulled to the ground, where he is struck repeatedly. 

Soon after, one shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. 

In total, at least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds—including several after Pretti is lying motionless on the floor. 

The backlash 

The reaction to Pretti’s killing was more forceful than the one that followed Renee Good’s— compounded by it. On Saturday, responding to a wave of anger from his party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would oppose a government spending bill that includes $64.4 billion in funding for DHS, of which $10 billionis earmarked for ICE.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, who represents New York, said on Saturday evening. He added that “because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

Before the weekend, Schumer and other Senate Democrats had signaled that they had wanted to avoid a shutdown and the bill looked likely to pass in the Senate. But Pretti’s killing at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, after being pepper-sprayed and shot several times on the ground, prompted a wave of anger in the party.  

The shooting prompted rare statements of condemnation from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, he said Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”

Several Republicans, too, broke ranks with their party to call for an investigation into the shooting, among them Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Cassidy, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, described the events in Minneapolis as “incredibly disturbing” and said the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake” following the shooting. 

Ricketts, who is a staunch supporter of Trump, called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident,” describing the shooting as “horrifying”.

Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters to the heads of ICE, Border Patrol, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday, inviting them to a hearing on Feb. 12. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino, requested a similar hearing over the weekend.

Walking back 

By Sunday, Trump appeared to have realized that Minneapolis represented a political crisis. Successive polls have shown his approval rating on immigration plummeting. A YouGov poll taken after the killing of Pretti showed support for abolishing ICE at record highs—with more supporting abolition than opposing it—and nearly 20% of Republicans in favor of shuttering the agency.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declined to give his backing to the officer who killed Pretti, and said his Administration was “reviewing everything” to do with the incident. 

He also suggested for the first time that he might be looking for a way out of Minneapolis. 

“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said, without offering a timeline.

On Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced Trump from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem’s description of Pretti, saying she had “not heard the president characterize” Pretti as a domestic terrorist.

Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, the city where he lived. He was a keen outdoorsman and biked trails near his home. 

Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, found out about the death of their son when they were called by an Associated Press reporter.

In a statement released to the media, the family criticised the “sickening lies told about our son by the administration.”

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the statement said.

Michael Pretti said his son wanted to “make a difference in this world.”

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” he said in a statement shared with several media outlets. 

“Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact,” he added.

The man fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning has been identified as 37-year-old Alex Pretti.   

Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, the city where he lived. He was a keen outdoorsman and biked trails near his home. 

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Pretti’s father, Michael, said he wanted to “make a difference in this world.”

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” he said in a statement shared with several media outlets. 

“Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact,” he added. 

Multiple videos of Saturday’s shooting show Border Patrol agents spraying Pretti with a substance and pinning him to the ground before the shooting. Moments before the confronation, Pretti was attempting to help a woman protester who was being pushed by a federal agent.

Pretti’s family said he had been motivated to join the protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the killing of another Minneapolis resident, 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, by a federal agent just over two weeks ago.

Read more: Federal Agents Kill Another Person in Minneapolis Immigration Crackdown

“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” Michael Pretti told the Associated Press. “He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others.”

He said he had a conversation with his son earlier this month in which he told him to be careful while protesting.

“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”

At a news conference on Saturday, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit to carry a firearm in public and only had a few parking tickets.

Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, a former colleague of Pretti’s at the VA Hospital, described him as “a kind person who lived to help.”

“He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together,” Drekonja said in a post on BlueSky. “Will never happen now,” he added. 

Born in Illinois, Pretti graduated from Preble High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 2006. He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 2011, before attaining a nursing license. 

Pretti was devoted to his patients at the VA hospital. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents professional employees affiliated with the Minneapolis VA Hospital, said Pretti “dedicated his life to serving American veterans.”

“While details of the incident are still emerging, one fact is already clear: this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct result of an administration that has chosen reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership and de-escalation,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

After watching coverage of the shooting on the news, Mac Randolph recognized Pretti as the man who cared for his father, Terry Randolph, during his final days in December 2024.

“He spent three, four days in the ICU and explained everything that would happen when they turned off the oxygen,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “He was as compassionate a person as you could be.”

After his father passed, Randolph said Pretti took his father, an Air Force veteran, on an “honorary walk” around the facility on his gurney, draped in an American flag.

“You could see that it wasn’t the first time he had done that,” he said.

Randolph said he felt compelled to share a video on social media in which Pretti reads a final tribute to his father, Terry, who passed away at 77-years-old.

“Today, we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti says in the video. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.”

Minutes after federal agents killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, the second fatal shooting by immigration authorities in the city in as many weeks, dozens of protesters arrived at the scene.

A tense stand-off ensued with immigration agents who had cordoned off the intersection. Demonstrators called the agents “Nazis” and told them to “go home.” The agents responded by mocking the protesters.

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Just a day earlier, tens of thousands of Minnesotans had filled the same city’s streets in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state and the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, by an immigration officer less than two miles away from Saturday’s shooting. 

Read more: Federal Agents Kill Another Person in Minneapolis Immigration Crackdown

Organizers estimated that 50,000 people attended the “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, clergy members, and labor unions.

Those demonstrations passed peacefully, but on Saturday, protesters clashed with federal agents for hours as the city convulsed with anger over the killing of Pretti. Federal agents fired tear gas, flash bang grenades and pepper balls.

By the afternoon, protests had taken over the intersection where the shooting had taken place and turned it into a makeshift memorial to Pretti.

Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who worked at the Veterans Affairs in Minneapolis. His family said he was motivated to join protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis after the killing of Renne Good on Jan. 7.

He was killed after being pepper-sprayed and tackled to the ground by Border Patrol agents on Saturday morning. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Pretti was armed and “violently resisted,” but video of the incident shared by bystanders later contradicted that claim.

A man was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, the second fatal shooting in just over two weeks by federal authorities in the city.

The incident follows the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by a federal agent less than three miles away, and comes as the city was already convulsed by mass protests calling for an end to the surge of immigration agents in the state.

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The victim was named as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and intensive care unit nurse who treated veterans. His family said he was motivated to join protests after Good’s killing.

Several videos of the shooting show an altercation taking place around 9 am when a woman protester was pushed to the ground by a Border Patrol agent. When Pretti attempts to stand between the agent and the woman, the agent pepper-sprays him in the face. More agents join the fray and tackle Pretti to the ground as he is disoriented. As a group of agents restrain Pretti on the ground, one emerges from the melee with a gun, and soon after, a shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. At least 10 shots were fired in around five seconds, including several as Pretti lay motionless on the ground.

Read more: Minnesotans Shutter Businesses and Call Off Work in Economic Blackout Day to Protest ICE

President Donald Trump responded to the shooting in a lengthy post on Truth Social that called immigration agents “patriots” and claimed they were in Minneapolis because of “massive Monetary Fraud” and “Illegal Criminals that were allowed to infiltrate the State.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference on Saturday afternoon that Pretti had not been in trouble with the police before.

“The only interaction that we are aware of with law enforcement has been for traffic tickets and we believe he is a lawfully gun owner with a permit to carry,” O’Hara said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gave a detailed account of the shooting in a statement that was contradicted by several videos shot by bystanders at the scene. The agency said it was carrying out a “targeted operation” when an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, pictures of which it shared with the media. It said officers attempted to disarm the man, but he “violently resisted.”

“Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene,” the statement continued. It added: “[T]his looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

But several videos showing the lead-up to the fatal shooting show Pretti filming a group of Border Patrol officers with his phone in his right hand, with his left hand empty. The video shows an agent pepper-spraying Pretti in the face and, together with several other officers, dragging him to the ground. That is when the fatal shooting occurs.

Read more: Fatal ICE Shooting Sparks Scrutiny of Killings in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

The incident is the latest in a series of shootings in which the DHS claims the victim was threatening the life of an agent, only for video evidence to later contradict the claim. After the shooting of Renee Good, the DHS accused her of “attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism,” only for video evidence to show her turning her car away, and the agent positioned to the side of her vehicle when he fired the fatal shot.

Several other federal officials gave accounts of events that were similarly inaccurate to those given by DHS.

Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan Pretti, found out about the death of their son when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. As of Saturday evening, the family had still not heard from anyone at a federal law enforcement agency about their son’s death, according to the AP.

In a statement released to the media, the family criticised the “sickening lies told about our son by the administration.”

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the statement said.

Saturday’s shooting prompted a wave of anger from local politicians, many of whom have been calling for the Trump Administration to bring an end to its immigration surge following weeks of violent encounters with Minnesotans, including the use of pepper spray and the arrest of peaceful protesters.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz described the shooting as “sickening” and called on President Trump to end his immigration crackdown in the state.

“I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening,” Walz said in a post on X.

“The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

Later, he urged people protesting the shooting to do so peacefully.

“We want peace, they want chaos,” the governor said of the federal government. “We cannot and will not give them what they want.”

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said: To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW.

O’Hara, in his press conference, called for greater discipline from the estimated 3,000 federal immigration agents in the city.

“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” he said.

A few hundred protesters gathered at the scene of the shooting in south Minneapolis by noon, where they scuffled with federal agents who had blocked off the intersection. Protesters screamed “I smell Nazis” at the federal agents and shouted at them to “go home.”

The agents deployed tear gas and used pepper-spray as they fought running battles with protesters.

The shooting comes a day after thousands took to the streets across Minnesota on Friday, closing down businesses and calling out of work in a mass protest against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the state.

The “Ice Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” demonstration, organized by community leaders, members of the clergy, and labor unions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” economic blackout.

Trump, in his Saturday afternoon post, accused Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Walz of “inciting Insurrection.”

“Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!” he wrote.

As night fell across Minneapolis, many residents set out candles in their windows to memorialize Pretti. Several vigils were held across the city. A New York Times reporter visited one at Painter Park, near Pretti’s home, where more than 100 people gathered with candles and sang the opening lines to ‘This Little Light of Mine.’

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would not use force to acquire Greenland, the first time he has ruled out using military action to acquire the territory.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump lamented that the United States “probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable.”   

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“But I won’t do that,” he added. “That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Read more: The Five Ways Europe Could Respond to Trump’s Greenland Threat

“All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he continued.

The comments come amid a prolonged campaign by Trump to annex the island, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

That campaign has become increasingly confrontational in recent weeks, as Trump has insisted that there was “no going back” on his push to acquire Greenland, which he has insisted is essential for U.S. national security.

In recent weeks, Trump has posted a meme showing pictures of the island draped in an American flag, and raised the example of the U.S. military’s removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro when discussing his designs on Greenland, prompting fears that he may use military action to seize the territory.

Trump’s aggressive posture prompted angst among European officials, and his appearance was preceded by a series of speeches condemning his ambitions to take the territory. On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he described as a “new imperialism,” without mentioning Trump by name.

“We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron said. “And we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, similarly, did not say Trump’s name, but announced that the “rules-based order is fading.”

“Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid,” Carney said.

Trump’s pressure campaign over Greenland had ramped up ahead of Davos, escalating from words to action.

Over the weekend, he announced tariffs on eight European countries—and NATO allies— for taking part in military exercises on the island.

That in turn prompted threats of retaliatory economic measures from those countries, which were already subject to tariffs of 10% and 15%. European Union (E.U.) officials convened an emergency meeting to discuss a coordinated response. Some officials raised the prospect of abandoning the U.S.-E.U. trade deal struck last summer. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in E.U. investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the E.U.’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said.

This is a developing story.