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The Situation Room

New Video of Alex Pretti Minutes Before Fatal Shooting; Trump Administration Sidelines Bovino, Sends Homan to Minnesota; Senate Democrats Threaten Partial Shutdown Over ICE Funding. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired January 27, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news. The minutes before the shooting, new eyewitness video into The Situation Room, crucial moments before ICU Nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a border agent. We're going to take you through this new video.

Plus, sidelined, top Border Patrol Official Greg Bovino is set to leave Minneapolis today. We have new CNN reporting on why and who's replacing him.

And push for impeachment, we're going to speak with a congresswoman who's on the growing list of lawmakers calling for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be impeached.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Also happening now, crucial hearing. Right now up on Capitol Hill, officials are meeting to determine exactly why a U.S. Army helicopter and jet collided one year ago today.

Plus, landmark trial, a mother is blaming Instagram for a teen daughter's death. Will this case change the social media landscape?

And later, never forget. Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 81 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. We will honor the victims and survivors.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

And the breaking news, there's brand new witness video showing the minutes leading up to the fatal shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti by a federal agent in Minneapolis. The video does not capture any violent action by protesters or Pretti himself. And that's contrary to how some members of the Trump administration characterized the scene. Several of them said it was a riot, in which Pretti assaulted federal agents, not true.

Watch closely and you'll see Pretti with two officers. You'll then see one officer push Pretti.

BROWN: We should warn you that this next part of the video is disturbing. As the scene unfolds, you'll see several agents swarm toward Pretti. Pretti is on the ground as bystanders shout for the agents to stop. And then you'll hear a total of ten gunshots. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is police brutality. They're kicking an observer. They are kicking on him in the face. (BLEEP).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's dive further right now into this new video with CNN's Tom Foreman. Tom, take us through everything we see here.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This video just gets worse and worse and worse for the White House and what they've been claiming. Let's start with the general setup here. It's about seven minutes of video before all of this happens, and it puts everything in deeper context.

Let's start first with the general street scene here and let this play out. What had happened, according to witnesses, is that a group of ICE agents had been in pursuit of somebody who they say was an undocumented immigrant, who they say was dangerous. He ran into a building there where the door was locked by people inside and they couldn't get inside.

Pretti and the other protesters, according to what we heard, were across the street shooting video. They were at some distance here watching it. And they were seeing this evolve on the other side of the street. Let's look at the other image here. Now, you see one of the officers here with pepper spray in his hand, even though again, we're talking about, according to witnesses, only about ten people across the street from them, not pushing up on them, not necessarily crowding them. You hear the whistles in the background. It's a warning sign that many protesters have out there to say ICE is in the area.

Now, what happens when you follow the next piece of the video here is that the agents, according to witnesses, and when you watch the video, they crossed the street to engage with pretty and the other people over there. So, Pretti is there, the agents come across and engage with them, and that's when you see this moment where one of the agents pushes Pretti off the road.

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And you hear Pretti yelling, don't push me, and he says, I'm not in traffic. You are in traffic. You came in traffic to come over and pushed me at this point.

So, again, the notion of this being a riot, which we've heard many times, this is not -- they may not like it, but this is hardly the definition of a riot.

Then another person gets knocked to the ground and pinned down. If you look at that video, Pretti yells out in this video, hey, leave her alone. But he doesn't grab an officer. He doesn't approach officers. He just says, leave her alone while they're pinning this person down. So, again, all the indications here in this video, which is, again, six, seven minutes before the shooting shows all of the aggression coming from the officers aimed at these people.

And then finally we moved to the moment where they grabbed Pretti as he's trying to help a person who has also been pushed down. When you see that video, the agents storm him. Look, they're shoving people. This woman goes to the ground, Pretti goes to help her. Remember, he's a nurse. He's trying to help this woman who's down on the ground, and the agents grabbed him while his back is turned and dragged him into the center of people, where they're all gathered around here, you can see one of them start striking him in the head with some sort of device, or you see him smacking somebody in the head here, and then finally you reach the point where the gunfire breaks out.

So, was it a riot? It certainly doesn't look like one unless you're talking about a riot of the officers themselves. Was Pretti -- did he have a weapon out that he was showing anybody? No. There's no evidence of that in any of the video. Was he grabbing or attacking the officers? No. There's no evidence of any of that, Wolf. As I said, the more video we get, the worse and worse and worse it looks for the White House account of what's went -- on what went on.

BLITZER: And he's on the ground, and then you hear those ten gunshots. It is so, so awful just to think about that, guy is on the ground and they fire ten shots right at his (INAUDIBLE).

FOREMAN: He's in a sort of a fetal position, you know, sort of face down on the ground. And from all evidence in the video, the only person to touch Alex Pretti's gun was the ICE agent who took it from him a moment before they opened fire on him. So, in all indications are he was unarmed when they shot and killed him.

So, this is -- again, this -- none of this is playing well for the official account of what's going on because all of it says the official account is wrong,

BLITZER: And all these videos are so powerful and graphic, so disturbing indeed.

All right, thanks very much, Tom Foreman. Pamela?

BROWN: All right, Wolf, I'll take it from here in New York.

For more on this story, I want to bring in Jason Houser. He served as the chief of staff for ICE during the Biden administration. Jason, you just saw what Tom laid out. What do you find most striking from this new video of the moments before the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti?

JASON HOUSER, FORMER BORDER PROTECTION COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: I think a few things, and thanks for having me. You know, one, you know, the idea that officers, especially Border Patrol, that are typically focused on national security, public safety threats along the border and even ICE agents train to these sort of situations is -- and especially since training can be years or even decades prior when they're going through the (INAUDIBLE), it is just not accurate. I mean, these are highly volatile situations. They're highly intense. There's a lot of emotions. There's exhaustion both on the fact of the protesters and law enforcement and sort of the direction and the leadership decisions that has put officers in these positions is what are driving these outcomes.

And this all needs to be like unbiasedly reviewed and investigated, there needs to be both a review of both the issues that happened before this incident and after the hours before and hours after, and how it was handled, why were the officers there, what was the legal authorities. And we also need to examine how these officers are being trained, if they're going to continue to be put in these environments like this that are not focused on national security and public safety threats.

BROWN: How critical do you think the body camera footage of the Pretti shooting will be in this investigation? Because we know the CBP officers there were wearing body cameras. Do you expect we'll ever see that footage or the video taken by Pretti on his phone?

HOUSER: Body cameras create accountability and safety for both the public and for law enforcement. In my time as chief of staff of ice, we pushed aggressively for a body-worn camera program that was supported by the rank and file and leadership within ICE. It's my understanding that over the last year, those programs have been rolled back or slowed. And it is critical for the protection of law enforcement that they wear their body-worn cameras and it accounts accountability.

Additionally, we need CBP and the Department of Homeland Security to clearly articulate to the public what their use of force policies are.

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That's both with ICE, CBP and even U.S. Citizens Immigration Service that now has officers. That creates accountability. It creates more trust. And it also creates a standard that officers can be trained to, which, clearly, over the decades that ICE and CBP have existed, these sort of situation and these environments have not been the standard. And we need to understand how new officers and officers that have been in service for decades are being retrained. They're going to continue to be in these sort of situations.

BROWN: There have been so many videos now coming out of Minneapolis, also coming out of Maine. We've seen some from Chicago where you've seen really aggressive tactics from some of these agents from ICE and from CBP.

And like you pointed out earlier, motions are high. There's a lot of tension between the protesters and these agents and the protesters are blowing their whistles and, you know, trying to be out there on the streets monitoring, taking video of what's going on, which is protected under the First Amendment. But, of course, you cannot interfere in a law enforcement operation.

But I wonder, are you concerned there's an element of a psychological shift for some of these agents, like once they sort of gear up and they're put in that position? And does it become a sort of us against them and there's an element of sort of dehumanizing the other side, quote/unquote?

HOUSER: I do. There becomes and that's both in my Homeland Security and military experience. There can become that sort of -- you get that glaze of sort of just carrying out the mission and the duty.

I must state though that 48 months ago when I was the chief of staff at ICE, these are the same officers that were responding to mass surges at the border and were humanely and justly trying to vet individuals coming into this country and handling of kinder-aged and unaccompanied children, I have seen the vast, the breadth of sort of the expectations of what these officers are asked to do.

And the sort of being thrust into the streets of Minneapolis, not targeting hard and convicted criminals, but sort of being a tool of both sort of politics, but also being pulled away from their mission, where they do want to go out for those that have taken advantage of a broken immigration system that are here to hurt us, that you can see where the sort of confusion in that can be extremely stressful for officers and not being equipped and being thrust into the politics of the day is dangerous.

And we need to allow law enforcement to be directed and led by law enforcement focused on the -- there's no disagreement of the threats that face our country, and those are where the focus should be. And, clearly, let's hope that this moment is a reset and it's not just an adjustment of talking points by the administration.

BROWN: Jason Houser, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

HOUSER: Thank you.

BROWN: Wolf?

BLITZER: And still ahead, the mayor of Minneapolis now says he plans to meet today with President Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, as the White House appears to plot its gradual retreat from the city.

And the deadly shooting has lawmakers putting even more pressure on the White House to rein in ICE, now threatening a government shutdown to make that happen. CNN's new reporting, that's coming up right here in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: Breaking news, the Trump administration's top Border Patrol official, Gregory Bovino, is leaving Minneapolis, and the president's border czar, Tom Homan, is stepping in. Sources tell CNN Bovino has been stripped of his access to his social media accounts, but not removed from his duties.

More than two dozen people were arrested last night protesting outside of a hotel where Bovino was reportedly staying. BROWN: And President Trump is facing political backlash from within his own party, and the White House now appears to be shifting its rhetoric. Watch.

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REPORTER: Secretary Noem said Alex Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. Stephen Miller labeled Pretti a domestic terrorist. Does the president agree with them?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look, as I've said, I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretti in that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The New York Times reports President Trump met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski for two hours in the Oval Office last night. And according to The New York Times, the president did not suggest either of their jobs were at risk.

BLITZER: We're covering all of the angles. CNN's Betsy Klein is over at the White House. Priscilla Alvarez is joining us as well.

Priscilla, I know you're getting new information all the time. I'll start with you. What are you learning this morning about this immigration crackdown in Minnesota?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, today, Wolf, we are expecting for Gregory Bovino to leave Minneapolis. Now, of course, as you had mentioned there, he was the face of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in cities across the country, not just Minneapolis, but recall also, for example, Chicago and Los Angeles.

But now comes the pivot to Tom Homan, the White House border czar, who the White House has described as managing immigration and customs operations in Minneapolis. Of course, Holman is a veteran ICE official.

Now, all of this points to a shift in strategy because what Bovino and Homan represent within the administration are two different ideas about how to pursue the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda. Of course, Bovino, as we saw in many cities, had taken a broad approach with his immigration sweeps along with his Border Patrol agents, whereas Tom Homan has generally described wanting to take a more targeted approach to enforcement by going for public safety and national security threats.

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And then if any other undocumented immigrant is in the vicinity, they too could be swept up.

So, there are slight changes here. I think the question is, and something that we are looking toward, is what does it look like practically on the ground in Minneapolis. And we just don't know that yet. But, certainly, this has been a changing dynamic and one that's also revealed the tensions within the administration within the Department of Homeland Security as to how to execute on the president's mass deportation campaign. Of course, U.S. Border Patrol was brought in, Gregory Bovino being chief of the Border Patrol to do these sweeps across the country. But, generally, they are on the U.S.- Mexico border and any work they do in the interiors in support of ICE or of local law enforcement.

So, it was a pivot already last year in how they were conducting themselves and that had come under intense scrutiny. Now the question is, does ICE go back to the type of enforcement that they are typically known for, which doesn't often happen in broad daylight but rather is very targeted and strategic in approach?

BROWN: All right, Priscilla, thanks so much.

I want to go over to Betsy at the White House because, Betsy, we're learning more about what President Trump has been doing behind the scenes. Betsy?

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Pamela, we are witnessing in the last 24 hours a very notable shift in both tone and strategy from this White House. And I want to give you a quick recap of the messaging that was coming out of here over the weekend in the immediate aftermath of federal law enforcement killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. We heard from senior officials, like Stephen Miller, the president's deputy chief of staff, along with Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, and Homeland Security Kristi Noem, describing him as a domestic terrorist and claiming that he was attempting to massacre federal law enforcement.

That message was promoted across social media channels, including the official White House account. The White House receiving significant pushback to that messaging, including from some top allies, lawmakers, as well as conservative media personalities, even the NRA. Internally, we have learned that some administration officials were deeply frustrated this weekend over how Bovino and Noem handled that fallout. And President Trump for his part spent significant time watching the media coverage of this incident unfold, and he was also unhappy with how his administration was portrayed. The White House on Monday seeking to put some distance between President Trump and Secretary Noem's comments there and all of this leading to that staff shakeup that Priscilla just detailed.

But President Trump spoke on Monday to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, along with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, by all accounts, extremely productive, constructive conversations. We heard from Walz said he pushed President Trump for an independent investigation and also to reduce the number of federal law enforcement on the ground. Frey, for his part, said that he and Trump were in agreement that the present situation cannot continue. Trump for his part, says there could be an off-ramp. Listen.

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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think so. Yes, I mean, I think so. What we need is they're criminals, you know? They have criminals. And all I said, just give us your criminals. And if you give us the criminals, it all goes away. They're there to pick up murders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KLEIN: Now we know that President Trump met with Secretary Noem and her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, in the Oval Office for nearly two hours yesterday, that meeting at Noem's request.

Now, Trump, sources tell our colleague, Alayna Treene, did not indicate that their jobs were at stake, but they did have a frank conversation about the path forward in Minnesota. Wolf and Pamela?

BLITZER: All right. Betsy Klein reporting from the White House, thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Coming up here in The Situation Room, Democrats are now threatening a partial government shutdown. They're trying to take a stand against ICE after the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti. Up next, we'll ask a Democrat on the Appropriations Committee about these threats and what they'd actually mean.

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BROWN: Well, happening now, a standoff over ICE funding threatens to send the government into a partial shutdown on Friday. Senate Democrats are demanding the DHS funding be separated into its own vote after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Democrats will not withhold the funding to demand closer Congressional oversight. Just days before the Pretti killing, seven House Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the DHS funding.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar is a Texas Democrat who sits on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. Thank you so much for joining us.

So, the Senate returns to D.C. today to take up this funding deal. If Republicans refuse to break out the DHS funding separately, what do you think should happen? Should your Democratic colleague shut down the government over it?

REP. VERONICA ESCOBAR (D-TX): Well, good morning. Thanks for having me on. I have to tell you, this is a pivotal moment in America, and Americans are witnessing the attacks on American communities by the Department of Homeland Security. People have died. We are seeing massive detention facilities, like the one in my district, go operate in a way that is not transparent. There was a homicide inside that facility.

Things cannot and should not stand as is.

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The status quo is unacceptable. And I think it's very important for Senate Democrats to do everything possible to --