Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
ICE Agents Shoots U.S. Citizen Protesting in Minneapolis; Man Shot & Killed By Fed. Agents In Minneapolis, DHS Says He Was Armed. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired January 24, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:00]
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Video posted online shows officers wrestling a man down onto the ground before what sounds like gunshots being fired.
We do want to warn you, what you're about to see may be disturbing for some viewers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED). What the (EXPLETIVE DELETED). They killed him. Did they (EXPLETIVE DELETED) kill that guy? Are you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) killing me, dude?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: The shooting in Minneapolis inflaming what's already a tense situation between authorities and protesters in the city. Federal agents have deployed tear gas as hundreds continue to gather at the scene of the killing. Today, Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz is vowing his state will keep the peace.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ (D), MINNESOTA: They think they can provoke us into abandoning our values. Well, they're dead wrong. We'll keep the peace. We'll secure the justice with our neighbors, and we'll see this occupation ends. Minnesotans and Minnesota law enforcement that continuously is being denigrated by this administration will continue to be the adults in the room, the professionals in the room, the decent human beings in the room that will keep the peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: CNN's Sara Sidner is there on the ground.
Sara, there are a lot of people who remain in the streets. They're very upset about what transpired today and even before today. So what is going on right now?
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Believe it or not, I mean, what you're hearing is people who have put a huge number of barriers here standing up above them and chanting, "ICE out." They've managed to do that, actually, with the local authorities. The ICE agents and DHS were here standing in the street, people standing up against them, and then local authorities, the sheriff's department, the police department came in, allowed the federal agencies and federal agents to leave.
And so, in some ways the protesters have accomplished right here what they wanted to accomplish, which is to tell the federal authorities to get out of their town and particularly get out of this area.
I am just a few yards away. If you look down the street, this is 26th. That is Nicolette there. And if you go past there, you will see the donut shop where they -- we initially saw the first view of the actual shooting and killing of a man at the hands of federal agents. The third shooting that has occurred at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis in less than a month. People are riled. They are so furious.
But they're also filled with sorrow because many people did witness that this morning here, right outside of that donut shop. I spoke with one of the witnesses who happened to be in town. He is actually a person who himself had been detained and jailed by ICE and ended up using legal means to fight back, to get out. And he came here to show his documentary of what he went through. That was supposed to happen today.
He happened to be in the donut shop, eating his food, getting his breakfast when he saw the ICE agents show up chasing someone, he said, who ended up going into the donut shop that, you know, then the donut shop locked the doors. I guess I'll just let you hear what he told me in an interview inside of the donut shop.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: You were inside the donut shop when you saw the ICE agents. They were chasing someone else who came into the shop.
NILSON BARAHONA, WITNESS: You're right. Yes.
SIDNER: But they couldn't get into the shop. So then they responded to those who were outside who had come to help.
BARAHONA: Yes.
SIDNER: What did you see before the shooting, just before the shooting? And then what did you see happen?
BARAHONA: Well, what I saw that there was a lot of people, you know, getting together, trying to come and get the attention from the officers, and they managed to do it. But the way that the officers reacted when they saw these people, you know, they started pushing them away and like being physical to them, you know. And as they were being physical to this one lady in particular, she tried to look like to somebody, you know, to grab on to.
And it just happened to be this person who got shot. And I saw him like trying to hug her and push her away to the sidewalk. But when he did that, all the officers got their attention on him, you know, as he was the one taking that woman away from their hands and everything escalated so fast. It's like, I don't know, I --
SIDNER: How did you see -- did you see how they treated the man who was trying to grab the woman away from them?
BARAHONA: Well, we got video. We can give it to you if you want to see that. But I was -- honestly this is a very traumatic experience.
[16:05:01]
And my mind doesn't even want to go there, to be honest. I don't want to think about it, but this is what we're living right now, you know? And I came here from Atlanta to share the love. I came here to tell Minneapolis they are not alone. I never thought that I was going to be witnessing none of this. You know?
SIDNER: What has been your experience? Have you had an experience with ICE, with DHS?
BARAHONA: In 2019, 287 program, I was put in immigration detention and I was detained for 13 months. During those 13 months, I managed to organize a hunger strike and a work strike inside detention. We were able to get the attention of the authorities and that place and that being shut down eventually because of what we did inside detention, you know, organizing and activism.
That story became a documentary. And now I'm going around the country telling my story, showing the documentary to people, you know, trying to create spaces so we can have local community members and local organizers to connect.
SIDNER: So you were in ICE detention. You came here to show your documentary and ended up witnessing this killing by ICE?
BARAHONA: Yes. Suddenly the documentary was supposed to be screened today, which I don't think is going to happen anymore, but --
SIDNER: For you, in witnessing this, after what you went through, how did you get out of detention?
BARAHONA: Well, I wasn't supposed to be detained in the first place. You know, the allegation that ICE had against me, they were like lies. They said that I was -- I wasn't admitted by immigration officer, that my entry was unknown, that the time of entry was unknown, when I entered the country without a visa, you know, so --
SIDNER: And you came here legally, but ended up in detention anyway?
BARAHONA: Yes. Correct. And at that time when I was arrested, it was on October 19th, 2000 -- October 19th, 2019. So, you know, my father is a citizen. He became a citizen when I was still a minor. I am married to a United States citizen. You know, my sisters, they were born here. My family is here. Where else am I going to go? This is my home. You know? So I've been fighting for a long time. It's been five years now since I went through it. And I can't stop fighting because I know there is thousands of people
going through the same thing that I went through when I was detained. You know?
SIDNER: And now you've witnessed ICE killing someone here. How are you going to get through this?
BARAHONA: I really don't know. All I can say is that I know I have strong community members, you know, that I can get support from.
SIDNER: Are you afraid of being detained again? Are you afraid that you will be targeted?
BARAHONA: Retaliation is real. And I lived it personally because during my time in detention, we put a lawsuit in a federal court. And then after winning that lawsuit, a lot of people got released who ever had underlying conditions, too, the COVID because I was detained during the COVID. And that time they closed the courts so my case couldn't move forward. So we decided to go to federal level.
So what happened is that once we won the lawsuit, ICE contacted me inside detention and they say that I didn't have any underlying conditions in order for me to be released, even though I was one of the main plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Then they contacted me a second time saying that they have already found my records, which was a lie, because my lawyer submitted it again and they say that, at that time I wasn't going to be released because I was a threat to the community and the threat to the community was the organizing work that I was doing inside.
You know? and there is something that I have to say, and that is, even though I knew from the beginning that I have many ways to get relief, to get released, and people was telling me inside detention, stay quiet, don't say anything, man. You know, you're just going to make your case worse. Seeing what the people next to me was going through, I couldn't allow that to happen, you know?
And we went through so much inside detention, seeing all these people being -- all these rights being violated inside, all these people being misunderstood because these private corporations, they hire people who are not prepared to deal with immigrants in so many ways.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[16:10:07]
WHITFIELD: I mean, a traumatizing situation for that young man, what he went through. And then now to be a witness of the murder of a 37- year-old man, Alex Pretti, right there in the streets of Minneapolis. Sara Sidner talking with that gentleman who was in the donut shop, who viewed what so many people in the area witnessed today.
I think Sara is back with us now. And people continue to converge on the streets. There have been a placement of a sign in the very location where Alex Pretti died. Again, authorities said today the one thing that is consistent between federal and state and local authorities is the time in which this transpired. Just in the 9:00 hour this morning in Minneapolis.
The conflicting, accounts began from here that Alex Pretti was there on the street, on the sidewalk, and federal authorities say that he approached federal agents with a semiautomatic weapon. But local authorities and state authorities say that he had a permit for concealed weapon.
Now, what transpired is still up in the air about what precipitated this conflict that led to his death there in Minneapolis.
Sara Sidner back with us now.
And, Sara, now you have a different view, I understand, right, of all the people who have converged there in the streets of Minneapolis, not far from the location where this 37-year-old died.
SIDNER: Yes. Can you see it?
WHITFIELD: All right, Sara, I think I can hear you and I can certainly see the view.
SIDNER: Yes.
WHITFIELD: Tell me more.
SIDNER: Yes, yes, we just came up to the stairs to the top of a roof because we just wanted to give you a vantage point of what things look like right now in the streets of Minneapolis on Eat Street. Look, you're seeing 26th and Nicollet Avenue, and you are seeing a large group of folks out here. They have been protesting for hours now. They feel quite -- you're hearing cheering because they also feel quite vindicated.
They have been asking for ICE to get out of this town. They were also trying to get ICE out of this area. And now you are seeing ICE not here. You are seeing DHS agents. You are seeing federal agents who are not here. And so in some ways, they've managed to accomplish what they had been asking for, at least in the interim, at least for now. But you're also seeing just down the street.
And, Jerry, I don't know if you can pan up a little. Just down the street you're seeing there on Nicollet, that is where you're seeing a little bit of smoke and a little bit of snow and a crowd that's kind of in a U-shape. You're seeing people mourn the death of the man who was killed by ICE just this morning. And on the other side of that, you're seeing the businesses where that gentleman we just heard from, Nilson, witnessed this man being killed.
And so you have two different things going on here. You have sorrow. People standing around remembering the man who was shot and killed by ICE. And then you have the folks who are standing about, you know, a few yards down the street taking over the intersection, who are chanting, shut it down, ICE out of Minneapolis, bringing their signs, bringing their voices, and it's just quite a scene here.
It is -- has been extremely emotional for people. It has been extremely angering for people what they have been seeing. And the thing that we hear over and over and over again is that this is the third time that ICE has shot someone in this community, and we heard from the mayor. I got a chance to talk to him as well yesterday, and he said, if this is about safety, it is ICE that is creating a problem with safety, not the citizens here, not the immigrants here. And he, of course, as you know, has called for ICE to get out of this community.
The one thing that may ratchet this back up is if there is another round of officers coming out here from the federal agencies, if they're -- if they show up, there is an immediate reaction. They have whistles to let people know that they are in the area. We have heard them blow quite a few times. And so right now, the accomplishment for these protesters is that they were able to, you know, kind of force ICE out of the neighborhood.
The state and local authorities coming to kind of give a barrier so that they were able to leave and leave the protesters to have their voices heard very loud and clear -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: All right. Sara, well, you know, the U.S. attorney general is saying more federal --more representatives of the federal agencies are on their way to Minneapolis.
[16:15:03]
And if you heard from the Minnesota governor earlier who said, you know, the federal authorities left that crime scene only to leave them the mess now of trying to clean it up. You also heard from the governor earlier who said there are a lot of angles, videotape of what transpired that led to the 37-year-old's death.
SIDNER: There is.
WHITFIELD: And so when we come back, we have one more angle that we are able to present to our audiences right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:20:13]
WHITFIELD: All right. Welcome back. We continue to follow breaking news after a 37-year-old man, who Homeland Security officials say was armed, was shot and killed by a federal agent this morning in Minneapolis.
I'd like to bring in now CNN's Julia Vargas Jones.
Julia, we spoke in the last hour, and now there is new video of the deadly shooting. We heard from the governor earlier. He said there are several angles, which is why he used the words, it's sickening, meaning the incident. So now what are you learning in this new video?
JULIA VARGAS JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is just giving us incremental information, right, Fred. This is little by little, we're just being able to piece together what is it that was happening on that street in Minneapolis, as DHS was conducting what they called a targeted operation.
I want to play that video for you so that our viewers can see what is happening. So you start that video from the other side of the street. So the person filming it seems to be across the street. And, again, this will be difficult to watch. But right now, right there, that's when you see the man who later will be shot by federal officers for the first time. We just saw him first and now we're mid-altercation.
Officers seem to be wrestling with him already. We can count at least one, two, three, four, perhaps five, six officers are now engaged in this. Now I know we cannot hear the audio, but shortly we will hear what sounds like a gunshot and that is when you start hearing the reaction. There it is. And then you hear multiple, multiple loud pops that narrator now saying, what the F, reacting to all of this.
We hear before we get there, take your hands off him, don't touch him. Again, just telling a little bit more of a story. You can kind of see that Pretti, Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old man, had his hand up at some point. It looks like he had been holding his phone up. And as I mentioned before, Fred, that is what we're seeing a lot of people in Minneapolis who go to these ICE operations do. They're trying to film these agents they say to maintain some kind of accountability for these operations being carried out, those 3,000 federal agents in Minneapolis carrying out those operations.
This response from the community, the whistles, so it points to a whole scene that we've seen play out in other operations. But of course this one with a very sad and deadly ending. We still don't see, even with this new angle, Fred, what is it that led those officers to respond with fire. We still don't see whether or not that firearm was brandished or not. It's still too far away and too grainy to really be able to tell. And that is what investigators will now be looking at.
And as we heard in the past hour with the Governor Tim Walz saying that he's calling for the state to lead those investigations precisely for that reason -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: Yes. No matter what, it's upsetting to see, you know, someone get shot and someone die. And again, we still don't know all of the circumstances.
Julia Vargas, thank you so much.
And CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is also with us.
You're taking a look at this now new angle. We heard from the governor earlier in the day where he said there were several angles. A lot of people videotaping what took place. We still don't have the full story from any official about what preceded the contact between Alex Pretti and the federal agents, but based on that point of view, what are you seeing?
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think there's going to be a lot of questions here about justification. Was deadly force here necessary? You see, in the early video, the hands are up of this man. There are a number of officers surrounding him. They are pinning him down. It looks like they're using their hands at one point, maybe punching.
So they clearly, those officers clearly have the advantage from everything we could see at this this angle. And it appears, based on the way they're holding him, that he would be somehow restrained. So where is the deadly force justification here? And so far, we have just very brief comments from the Department of Homeland Security, from Greg Bovino, the head of Border Patrol there, that's running this operation.
It's very telling to me, certainly, that he came in. They had this press conference and they basically just took two questions, and he was asked, specifically asked by a reporter there in the second question about whether or not this man brandished the weapon.
[16:25:10]
I mean, that's a key part of this. This is a -- from what we're told by the police there, he was allowed to carry this weapon at this point. And so then becomes, OK, well, was the weapon on him? Was it out of him? What happens here? And we don't have any of those answers at this point. If you talk to, you know, you listen to the governor speak, you listen to the mayor speak, and really, you listen to the police chief, and they all seem to have a lot of questions about what exactly happened here.
It certainly sounds like the governor doesn't think that there was any justification here. The mayor 100 percent does not think that there was any justification here. But I think it was telling in what the police chief there said, who I think in all of this has been one of the most levelheaded, down the middle, trying to de-escalate the situations here. When I was listening to him talk earlier, I thought it was very interesting that, A, that he had not been told what happened here, that B, that he was saying that these federal officials, these federal officers needed to calm things down and sort of the way in which they were behaving was not helping the situation.
So I think there's just so many still questions here. But based on this video, based on everything that we are seeing right now, where is the justification for the actions of these officers? And I think that's going to continue to go on. We'll see if we hear more from the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection certainly. And I mean, Border Patrol is the one ultimately who would have to address this. But I think it's just -- it's raising a lot of questions.
The other thing that I think is very troubling, you know, where the weapon was found, we don't really have any of that information because it seems, based on everything we have so far seen, that the weapon was removed from the scene. You know, I've covered, sadly, a number of officer involved shootings. I've covered homicide scenes, shooting scenes. You don't mess with the evidence. You just don't mess with the evidence.
You don't remove a weapon from the scene until a crime scene investigator gets there so they can handle it, so they can remove evidence, you know, check for fingerprints maybe. Check for other ballistic evidence. And I don't know that that happened here. And if you listen to the governor earlier, I think this is a really important point. Like they had to all clear out of there. So who's processing this scene? Who's developing the evidence to try and figure out exactly how this unfolded?
I mean, we have a lot of video to look at. And the only ones that ultimately right now know exactly how this unfolded, why they did what they did, are those federal officers. And, you know, we'll see where this goes.
WHITFIELD: Yes. And just to underscore some of your thoughts there, I mean, from the police chief, he says, because he was asked, but he says they were not told of what led up to the shooting. So they were getting a lack of cooperation and details coming from federal authorities and then from Commander, you know, Greg Bovino. He would only say that Pretti approached an agent with a nine-millimeter firearm.
Again, we don't know how that weapon was revealed. And at what point it was revealed. And to underscore what you talked about, the processing of the area. We heard the governor and public service and public service --
PROKUPECZ: Safety.
WHITFIELD: Safety agency of the state also saying --
PROKUPECZ: I think that's who was saying it. Yes.
WHITFIELD: Right, also saying that federal authorities were there. Then they left the crime scene and said, OK, state authorities come in. But at this point, no one knows, you know, how the evidence was collected, what evidence was collected, and how, you know, it was also unusual according to our Josh Campbell, to see that sanitized version of photograph of the weapon, but to never see it in the possession of the person or the placement of or where was it on the crime scene. Lots of questions.
PROKUPECZ: Right. It was on the seat of a car, I believe, is the way -- the photos that I have seen of it. You know, usually when you have these situations, they're in a controlled either in a box, a crime scene investigator will handle it. This clearly, given the speed, remember, given the speed in which the government, our federal government released that photo, that firearm was not handled by any of the crime scene investigators because it was just, I mean, it's impossible. So those are the questions that need to be asked and need to be raised because, is there a fair investigation taking place here into exactly what -- into exactly what happened and how this transpired?
WHITFIELD: And live pictures right now of that scene, a marker already in place of the place where Alex Pretti died.
Shimon Prokupecz, thank you so much.
And people continue to feel very emotional, frustrated, upset and saddened of what took place in Minneapolis today.
[16:30:13]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:34:40]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, and you are in the CNN NEWSROOM. We are following breaking, upsetting news today, unrest in the streets of Minneapolis after a 37-year-old man, a U.S. citizen, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA, was shot and killed by federal agents earlier today. The individual has been identified as Minneapolis resident Elex Pretti. Now, law enforcement sources, his parents telling the Associated Press he was in ICU nurse, as I said.
Here, video shows the scene unfolding on the streets of Minneapolis. You can see several federal officers surrounding the individual. Is this the video that we're showing -- the right video right now? I don't think we're showing the right video.
This is a -- this is video from the streets of Minneapolis. But there it is. Here's the video of the -- of the incident itself. Let's just watch this for a second.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE 1: Holy -- (BLEEP) What the -- (BLEEP) They kill me. Do they -- (BLEEP) kill that guy?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE 2: Are you -- (BLEEP) kidding me, Dude?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Ten shots, it seems. Ten shots. We should note this is the third shooting in the second fatal shooting involving federal agents in Minneapolis this month, sent in the Trump surge. The city has been at the center of the Trump administration's hardline federal immigration enforcement operations, prompting widespread protests by the citizens of Minneapolis and Minnesota in subzero temperatures.
As for today's shooting, the Department of Homeland Security claims that the agents were acting in self-defense. They say the man approached Border Patrol officers in possession of a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. We're showing you right now.
There are, of course, a lot of questions about the shooting. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, says the individual -- says Mr. Pretti was a "Lawful firearm concealed permit carrier." It is not against the law if you have a permit to carry a firearm in Minnesota. State and local officials are condemning the tactics of these federal officials and immigration agents in the city, calling on the Trump administration to have ICE leave Minneapolis altogether.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACOB FREY, MAYOR OF MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: How many times must local and national leaders must plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognize that this is not creating safety in our city? We have seen these kinds of operations in other places in other countries, but not here in America, not in a way where a great American city is being invaded by its own federal government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: CNN's Sara Sidner joins us now on the ground in Minneapolis. Sara, lots of questions about the shooting. There doesn't seem to be much dispute that he -- the gentleman, Alex Pretti, had a firearm -- had a legal permit to carry it. The question seemed to be, was he actually touching the weapon, brandishing the weapon, holding the weapon at the time?
And I've asked DHS for a response on that. They say they're in the middle of an investigation and they can't answer that right now. Of course, that hasn't stopped President Trump from weighing in.
Tell us about what's going on in the streets of Minneapolis right now. Another shooting of another citizen -- another U.S. citizen. Another lethal shooting. Tell us the response where you are.
SIDNER: Yes. I mean, this is the third shooting at the hands of ICE agents in less than a month in this city. And so, you might imagine that people are angry over it. You are seeing the scenes here. This is right near where the latest shooting happened, where they killed Alex Pretti. You will see -- it's 26th & Nicollet.
This is what is known as Eat Street. There are all these different kinds of restaurants here, very multicultural people out here. Pleased with themselves because they did manage with their protests to try and move ICE out, move the federal agents out of here.
We saw local police come in first with the sheriff's department after ICE had been pelting them with a lot of tear gas. I was in some of that. And did not see any violent action on the part of the protesters before you saw it being deployed. But they were screaming and yelling at -- doing -- using their -- you know, their constitutional right of free speech.
I will also tell you that you are looking just down the street there, of where people are standing to mourn the death of Alex Pretti, shot and killed by an ICE officer. On the other side of that street, we were able to speak to a witness who was inside of the donut shop. It happened right outside of a donut shop this morning. One of the witnesses inside of that donut shop.
And he did not say that he ever saw a weapon come anywhere near to his -- to Alex Fretti's hand. All he saw was he -- says Alex Pretti was - and he didn't know him. He just -- we now know his name. But this man, he saw out there that ICE was actually after someone else who had run into one of the business here -- businesses here, and locked the door.
[16:40:00]
And so, he is sitting there watching this outside of the window of the donut shop, and he says what he saw was a man trying to help a woman who was being grabbed by the agents. He was trying to pull her away from them, trying to take her to safety. And then, they ended up descending on him. And you are seeing some of the videos as to what happened from there.
You are also seeing absolute fury and celebration in the streets. Fury, because they want ICE to leave this community. They believe that ICE is the one that are creating the criminal element, that they are the ones that are breaking constitutional laws. But they are celebrating because they have managed in their numbers to try and get ICE out. And we did see them all morning for hours and hours.
This place looked like a war zone. And I've been in war zones. I know what they look like down the street with all of the CS tear gas that we also got caught in. This has been a very, very sticky situation, a very tense situation. That is not going to end if more federal agents show up.
And that's one thing that they are very clear about. They are hearing some of the words of the Trump administration seeing what is being said. And their response is, if more agents show up, more of them are going to show up as well, because as they have put it, this is their city and they tend -- they intend to defend it. Right now, they are still out here.
And, Jake, I should also mention. It is dangerously cold out here. People are out here in negative temperatures. And they will stay out here, they say, as long as ICE is in their community. They will be using their whistles to let people know that ICE is in the area, if they do come back or if they are in any other neighborhood.
There is quite a network of community members who have gotten together to decide what they're going to do and to tell each other what is going on. You also have all of these businesses here, some of -- most of which are closed. But they became a triage center. When all of the CS gas was going on, you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, they were letting people in, helping them breathe, and providing them food and snacks.
It is -- it is quite the scene here in Minneapolis. You have Minnesotans helping Minnesotans. You have Minnesotans protesting other Minnesotans, the police and state troopers that came out here. It is quite the scene. But people are furious, but also celebrating, because so far in this neighborhood, ICE has been pushed out. Jake.
TAPPER: And, Sara, one of the things that we've seen in a lot of cases having to do with this immigration serve -- surge is the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, ICE, make a claim about something happen -- happening.
SIDNER: Yes.
TAPPER: And video seeming to contradict the official government explanation about what happened. And this is not my interpretation. This is what judges have said to Trump administration officials.
SIDNER: Right.
TAPPER: Greg Bovino?
SIDNER: Yes.
TAPPER: The government official said something today about why this shooting had to happen, why these border patrol agents or ICE agents --
SIDNER: Yes.
TAPPER: -- killed this man, 37-year-old Alex Pretti. How does what Bovino claimed happen match up with the video that you have seen?
SIDNER: It doesn't match well from what we have seen so far. But there are many different angles. And so -- that are coming out that I haven't seen. So, look. I think there is a huge -- and it cannot be overstated, a huge trust issue here. And that is for a reason.
Because what you hear from the Trump administration, what you hear from DHS at the beginning of something that they are involved with, and what ends up being shown on video, or they change their story, it's happened again and again and again. And not just here, as you know, Jake, in Minneapolis, but also in Chicago, where judges were there -- a case was brought, and the judges saw the video and said, that is not match what it is you've been saying, what it is you've been accusing people of.
So, there is this huge chasm, this huge trust deficit. And protesters say for good reason, they are looking at what happens from the administration, calling them lies and saying, we can't trust a word they're saying. We just want them to do one thing. If they want to calm down the situation here in Minneapolis, the protesters out in the streets, the neighbors in this area, and across the city are saying they need to leave.
That is the way that things will get calmer. That is the way that things will end peacefully is if they are able to stop this surge and remove ICE from these streets. Jake.
[16:45:06]
TAPPER: All right. Sara Sidner, thanks so much. CNN's Senior Crime and Justice Correspondent Shimon Prokupecz joins me now. And, Shimon, just to -- just to read what the Department of Homeland Security is claiming about this man that its agents killed, 37-year-old Alex Patrick -- Pretti, who was an intensive care unit nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. They're saying that he, Pretti, the man that they killed, "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
I have now seen at least two videos from two different angles. That does not seem to match the video. I have -- I am not able to see. I am sure he had a gun. He was a licensed -- he's licensed to have a concealed weapon, according to the state of Minnesota. It does not appear to me that he had any moment touched his weapon. It seems like he was filming these agents. And that's what they objected to. But you -- you're -- you've covered a lot more of these. What do you think?
PROKUPECZ: I mean, your eyes don't lie, Jake. Right? We keep saying this. I think the point you made in talking to Sara about how time and time again, an incident happens, DHS puts out a statement. And we just wait, give it a couple of days, and then we get a completely different story. We get the facts. We get video. We speak to family members, and what happens. It is not the way the Department of Homeland Security and this administration tells us it happened.
And based on everything that we could see right now, that video at one point, he has his hands up, right? It's almost as if he's trying to just say, hey, hey, you know. And he's filming.
The thing is, there are a number of people in Minneapolis who are doing this. They are following ICE around. They know who they are. They know the vehicles they're driving.
They alert each other pretty quickly, and -- in messages of where to go, where they're seeing ice, and they converge on these scenes. And no doubt we saw it in the Renee Good shooting. They are getting under the skin of these Border Patrol officers and these ICE officers. And that is a problem because these officers are not trained to deal with these situations.
They are in the interior of this country. Border Patrol does not -- does not patrol the interior of this country. They are not necessarily trained to defuse situations and to deal with these kinds of situations.
And every day when you have protesters in your face yelling at you, following you around, it's going to affect you. And I -- seriously, Jake, I've been wondering if this is part of what's been happening here because they have been so aggressive with these people. And, you know, again, every time we see how things developed and how things occurred, it's never the way the Trump administration says it happened.
TAPPER: But you remember, Shimon --
PROKUPECZ: Greg Bovino had an op -- yes.
TAPPER: Shimon, just to -- just to interrupt to give one more example of that as we're -- as we're monitoring all of this. You'll remember last week there was an incident where an African-American family from Minneapolis was tear-gassed. They were in their car, and they were tear-gassed.
PROKUPECZ: Right.
TAPPER: They had five kids. One of them was six months old, a little boy. And the tear gas was so detrimental, so deleterious to the health of two of their kids. They had to go to the emergency room. The DHS response to a news story. I think ABC News had tweeted a story about this. And the DHS response was to blame the parents for bringing their kids to a riot.
PROKUPECZ: That's right.
TAPPER: They tweeted that. The truth came out. The facts came out. They had just been caught in the middle. They were just driving home from an athletic event, and the cops -- or I shouldn't say, the cops. The federal agents and the -- were going after protesters.
They got caught in the middle. They got tear-gassed. And they had to -- the DHS shockingly deleted the tweet. And I say, shockingly, is because quite often, they just stand by their original erroneous statement.
There was a real credibility problem going on here. That is a real shame, because people want to have faith and confidence in what not only their government tells them, but the law enforcement forces that are entrusted with keeping us safe.
PROKUPECZ: No, there is. And it's always blame the victim here or the person that was, you know, shot or the person that was tear gassed or the person that was pulled out of their car, or the person that they were trying to arrest as a criminal in -- a criminal, illegal alien, as they would put it. It's always that person's fault. But there is -- you need justification to murder -- to basically shoot someone in this country, right?
[16:50:20]
TAPPER: Right.
PROKUPECZ: Like for police, they need that justification. You can't just -- and time and time again, when we get the facts, we start to question that justification. And I think that's going to happen in this case also.
Gregory -- Greg Bovino, the head of this operation for the Border Patrol, had an opportunity today to give us information to say exactly how things unfolded. And they chose really not to. Right? He took just two questions, and he was specifically asked were was the weapon -- was the gun brandished in any way. And they wouldn't answer that.
It was very -- they quickly ended the press conference. They took two questions. And that was it. They have supplied no information to the local police or to the state police.
There was no relationship. That is a problem in all of this too, that there is no relationship between the local police, the state police, and Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security. And we're seeing that play out.
You know, I'm just reading something here, Jake, as well, that the Minnesota investigators with a warrant were blocked from the crime scene. So, who is doing the investigation here? Anytime you have a police-involved shooting or law enforcement-involved shooting, there's an investigation. Who is doing that in this case?
Now, it should be the FBI. The FBI investigates shootings involving federal officials -- federal law enforcement. But we don't know, really, right now who's running this operation.
The head of public safety there in Minnesota said they couldn't even process the crime scene because of the volatile -- the situation was so volatile. And part of what created that was the federal officials when they were, you know, just indiscriminately just -- with the tear gas and pepper balls and the flashbangs. And also, I think it's important, Jake, as I think about this, the gun. We don't exactly know how the gun right now was recovered because the photo that they have released, and they quickly released that, quickly --
TAPPER: Yes. In the back of the car.
PROKUPECZ: It looks to be sitting -- right. It looks like it's sitting in like, a seat of a car. I've never seen anything like that in any shooting. When I have covered law enforcement involved-shootings, if there is a gun that is recovered, it is never like that. It's in a box. It's usually handled by a crime scene investigator.
TAPPER: Right.
PROKUPECZ: They seal it up. There's things that they do. That is an important piece of evidence in this. This is not like show and tell. Oh, let us just put this photo out for you. And look, we're good. We're clear. 15 minutes after, you know, this happens, oh, look, the man had a gun.
Well, then we learned the whole story here about, you know -- well, he had a right, you know. He had --
TAPPER: He had a permit.
PROKUPECZ: He had a permit for this.
TAPPER: Yes. He had a permit. And certainly, it's an important data point that he had a gun. But, if -- not if. He had a permit for it, if he hadn't actually touched it. And these are -- these are questions.
These are not facts. I don't know the facts. There's going to be -- well, I don't know if there'll be an investigation. Hopefully, there'll be an investigation, but there might not be.
We need to know. Did he have a permit for it? Governor Walz says he did. Did he have his hand on it at all? And did he have possession of it when he was shot? Because that's another question. The question is --
PROKUPECZ: That is.
TAPPER: -- you had like five or six officers on him. Did any of those officers take the gun from him at any point? And if they did, did they take the gun from him before he was shot? That is certainly relevant at all -- as well. And I have not been able to get any answers to that question.
Shimon, I want to play -- you referred to Greg Bovino and his press conference today. I want to play a little bit of the sound, if I can, and get your reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GREG BOVINO, COMMANDER-AT-LARGE, U.S. BORDER PATROL: We will not allow violence against our law enforcement officers. And we need state and local help, state and local law enforcement, to help us coordinate to get violent criminals off the street. Mayor Frey and Chief O'Hara just a few minutes ago did the opposite of that by omitting the fact that the suspect had a gun and magazines full of ammunition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So, I'm a gun owner. And a gun owner friend of mine who's much more of a gun enthusiast said that he had every right to have that gun if he had a permit. And the fact that he had other magazines means nothing.
PROKUPECZ: Means nothing.
TAPPER: That people who have permits -- have permits tend to carry more than the gun -- the magazines, more than -- you know, they tend to carry multiple magazines.
I -- again, I don't have a concealed carry permit. So, that's not my world. But I don't know that it means anything.
[16:55:16]
PROKUPECZ: Who told us that the man had a permit, right, Jake? The police chief.
TAPPER: Governor Walz.
PROKUPECZ: Police chief and -- right.
TAPPER: The police -- OK.
PROKUPECZ: Well, the -- yes, there was the police chief. I believe it was the police chief who basically said. That was the thing when he came out and he said they identified him as a 37-year-old white male. And then --
TAPPER: He was a citizen. Yes.
PROKUPECZ: He basically gave -- yes, a U.S. citizen. And he gave us some information. Gregory Bovino didn't do that. Right?
Like, it's funny. You know, you listen to Bovino speak. I had the opportunity to go to a press conference last week with him. And he says it's always the same thing. He stays on message, morally, ethical, lawful public safety operations.
TAPPER: Right.
PROKUPECZ: But you talk to people in Minneapolis, they don't feel safe.
TAPPER: Right.
PROKUPECZ: They don't want to leave their homes. They're scared. People who are not even just -- you know, no one is saying you shouldn't target people -- criminals --
TAPPER: Dangerous -- right.
PROKUPECZ: People who -- yes. I went on --
TAPPER: Dangerous, undocumented immigrants. Right.
PROKUPECZ: I went on an -- on a ride-along with ICE before -- right before the inauguration. And the way they go about how -- the way they go about normal situations doing this, it's very quiet. They do surveillance. They know who their target is.
They follow their target. They develop a target's pattern. They do it at 6:00 in the morning when there's no one on the street, so that you don't have these situations.
That has completely changed. Now, it seems every time ICE goes out, they go in the middle of the day, they go and they -- could be seen. They travel in large caravans. And people are seeing them.
TAPPER: Yes.
PROKUPECZ: And it's escalating the situation. So --
TAPPER: We don't know --
PROKUPECZ: I don't know --
TAPPER: We should just -- we should just note. I know you're using ICE as a shorthand for the federal agents. I mean, Greg Bovino is the Border Patrol commander. These are all different agencies. And we're not sure who exactly was involved in today's shooting.
One other note that I -- before I let you go, Shimon, I'd love to get your take on this. In the last couple of weeks since the Renee Good shooting in Minneapolis, we have seen resignations of law enforcement officials working for the Trump administration.
PROKUPECZ: Yes.
TAPPER: The acting U.S. Attorney for Minneapolis, a guy named Josh Thompson, who was one of the guys, if not the guy heading up all that -- all those fraud investigations. He resigned because he had been pressured by the Trump administration to investigate the victim of the shooting Renee Good, and her wife. Not launching an investigation into whether it actually was a "Good shooting." And then just a few days ago, the supervisory agent or a supervisory agent in the FBI resigned because she wanted to launch a civil rights investigation into the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, and had been told she could not, that that was not -- that she was not allowed to do that. She was trying to just follow standard protocol. And we should just note these are either career law enforcement officials or Trump administration officials. I mean, the acting U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis, Josh Thompson,
PROKUPECZ: Yes.
TAPPER: He had -- he had been appointed that by the Trump administration. For them to resign is not a small thing.
PROKUPECZ: No, it's a really big deal. Certainly, the FBI agent, I was really -- I -- that was very telling to me, as someone who has covered law enforcement as much as I have in the past. The FBI. I mean, FBI agents take their jobs very seriously. Right? Obviously.
TAPPER: And they often want the jobs for the -- they often want to be lifers. They want to work for the -- for the bureau for their -- for their whole life.
PROKUPECZ: It's a dream. Do you -- like --
TAPPER: Yes.
PROKUPECZ: Think of the idea. I mean, you spend your whole life because you have to live your life a certain way to become an FBI agent. And you do it. And, you know, it's a rigorous process to get in.
But it is very telling that that FBI agent -- that tells you that something was wrong. And I often wonder if -- you know, you're not seeing any of these kinds of resignations at the Department of Homeland Security that I know of right now or on the street level, where for -- you know, any of these federal officers. But we'll see. I mean, this is going to be really interesting to see how this -- how this goes from here and what they ultimately do in terms of a response.
TAPPER: All right. Shimon, thank you so much for your thoughts. Really appreciate it. With us now to discuss, Former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo. He's the author of the book "Securing Justice For The Murder of George Floyd."
Chief, thank you so much for being here. What's your reaction to today's shooting? As far as you can tell from the angles you've seen, what's your take on it?
