When footage surfaced on Saturday of a border patrol agent shooting and killing Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, top Trump administration officials wasted no time characterizing what happened. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Pretti “a domestic terrorist” who had tried to “assassinate federal law enforcement.” Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said that he “was there to perpetuate violence.” The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) official X account suggested Pretti was there to “massacre law enforcement.”
Their supercharged comments quickly seemed at odds with videos of the attack, including those that showed Pretti, 37, was on the ground and surrounded by agents when he was shot. The comments also frustrated many of the people usually supportive of the administration’s deportation strategy. Republicans and former DHS officials said that the comments have only fueled distrust of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“As senior management at HSI, I was trained that when a critical incident happens, you don’t pin yourself into one position or the other,” Oscar Hagelsieb, a former assistant special agent in charge for two decades at Homeland Security Investigations, a law enforcement agency that is part of DHS, told me. “This is Public Relations 101. What you say is, ‘We are going to let the investigation play out. We’re going to see where the evidence leads.’ ”
