The two federal agents who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have been placed on leave, officials said Wednesday.
While paid administrative leave is standard for law enforcement officers who shoot someone throughout the country, Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino previously said the agents who killed Pretti were still on the job, just transferred to a different location.
However, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday the agents were on leave, while adding that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Renee Good earlier in the month had also been placed on leave.
“We are following the exact same investigative and review process that we always have under ICE and under the Department of Homeland Security and within the administration,” Noem said at a press conference.
Noem and others throughout President Trump’s administration have sharply pivoted their comments around the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who was shot dead by two federal agents on Saturday while protesting Trump’s immigration operation in Minnesota.
Videos from the scene showed Pretti holding a cellphone when the feds wrestled him to the ground, took a gun from his waist and shot him dead. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Noem and others in the administration called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who threatened the officers in the immediate aftermath of the killing.
Even top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who initially described Pretti as a “would-be assassin” who tried to “murder” the agents, walked back his rhetoric on Wednesday and suggested the agents had not followed protocol. Meanwhile, Bovino has been transferred out of Minnesota.
However, the Department of Homeland Security is still leading the investigation into the shooting, and the agents have not been publicly identified.
Numerous Democrats were joined Wednesday by two Republican senators in calling for Noem’s removal as DHS secretary.
“What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters on Capitol Hill. “She should be out of a job. I mean, really, it’s just amateurish.”
