Top immigration enforcement officials in Donald Trump’s administration testified Thursday that an initial characterization of Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” did not come from them or their staff, appearing to contradict White House claims that the accusation originated in the agency whose officers fatally shot him in Minnesota.
The same day Border Patrol officers shot and killed Pretti on January 24, White House deputy chief of policy Stephen Miller called him a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti “committed an act of domestic terrorism.”
“That’s the facts,” she said. “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”
Those near-instant allegations appeared to be swiftly contradicted by multiple videos showing officers pepper spraying, wrestling to the ground and fatally shooting the 37-year-old nurse without ever having reached for the holstered pistol that he was legally carrying.
But the top officials at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday that those descriptions did not come from them or any of their staff.
“Did you provide Secretary Noem with an assessment of what Mr. Pretti was engaged in, and that he was engaged in domestic terrorism?” asked Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, the committee’s top Democrat.
“Is that why she said that, because you told her that was your belief at the time?” he added. “Are you the ones who told her that?”
ICE’s acting director Todd Lyons and CBP commissioner Rodney Scott both testified that they did not tell her that.
Asked whether anyone who reports to him or if anyone on his staff provided her with that assessment, Scott replied: “Not to my knowledge, sir.”
“Why would she tell the public that this was an act of domestic terrorism, right in the heat of the moment?” Peters fired back. “How could she possibly come to that kind of conclusion to tell the American public that when they’re watching this video?”
“I can’t speculate on what someone else would say or why, sir,” said Lyons.
“I can’t speculate to what the secretary thought at that time, sir,” Scott replied.
The Independent has requested comment from the White House.
Video footage from several bystanders shows Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when federal agents wrestled him to the ground, pinned him there, and fired 10 rounds at point-blank range.
A preliminary review by Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog also determined he was not brandishing a firearm that was recovered from the scene, and video footage appears to show an officer took the gun from Pretti’s body before agents opened fire.
Days after the shooting, Miller claimed that Homeland Security’s initial assessment of Pretti’s killing was “based on reports from CBP on the ground.”
Miller, the architect of the president’s anti-immigration agenda, appeared to walk back his initial statement and suggested that the officers who piled on Pretti “may not have been following that protocol.”
Peters and other Democratic members on the Senate committee want to hear directly from Noem.
“She needs to be before this committee,” Peters said. “This is an important question … How could you come to that conclusion, those narratives, before any evidence was there, even after all that’s happened since then?”
An initial investigation into Pretti’s killing was led Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s investigative arm, which is required to “preserve all evidence collected, including physical evidence collected by other federal entities, which are then properly transferred” to homeland custody, according to a sworn declaration in court documents from Mark Zito, the agency’s Special Agent in Charge for the St. Paul office.
All evidence “was collected and transported back to the FBI Minneapolis Field Office,” according to a sworn statement from an FBI official whose name is redacted in court filings.
That evidence includes body-worn camera footage, which has been “preserved,” according to Jeffrey Egerton, the executive director for the Investigative Operations Directorate within Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
“There’s a lot of other video, there’s body-cam video that’s all being looked at, and until all that evidence is evaluated, I can’t jump to a conclusion” about the case, Scott testified Thursday.
“I would ask America to do the same thing, but I am committed to transparency, to making sure all the information we have is made public when it’s appropriate,” he said.
The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting, which will remain separate from Homeland Security’s internal probe.
Pretti’s killing, two weeks after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, fueled outrage against the Trump administration’s weeks-long surge of immigration officers into Minnesota, where agents were accused of brutally targeting immigrants and citizens alike during protests and violent arrests.
Senate testimony about the operation from top officials overseeing the surge followed the administration’s announcement that federal officers would begin withdrawing from Minnesota in the coming days.
White House border czar Tom Homan, who was deployed to the state in the wake of Pretti’s killing and the apparent removal of Border Patrol “commander-at-large” Greg Bovino, said Thursday that “a small footprint of personnel” will remain in the state to supervise the transfer of “full command and control” of immigration enforcement back to the ICE field office in Minneapolis.
