Washington, Jan 29, (dpa/GNA) – Two federal officers involved in the fatal shooting of US citizen Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have been suspended from duty, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to dpa on Wednesday.
The spokesman noted that this is standard procedure in such cases.
On Tuesday, US media reported that a first comprehensive official report by US security authorities into the shooting showed that two officers fired at Pretti on Saturday.
Media outlets including the New York Times and CBS News reported that a US Border Patrol agent initially opened fire on Pretti, followed by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, citing an email containing the preliminary investigation that CBP sent to members of the US Congress.
The US Border Patrol is the CBP’s mobile, uniformed law enforcement arm.
The killing of Pretti, a white nurse who worked at a veterans hospital, inflamed tensions over the Trump administration’s mass immigration crackdown in Democratic-run cities, and provoked outrage after federal officials, blamed Pretti’s actions for his death, despite video footage to the contrary.
According to media reports citing the document, the report does not state that Pretti reached for his weapon, even though the US administration had earlier suggested that he posed an immediate threat.
Pretti is the second US citizen to have been shot dead by federal officers in Minneapolis since the beginning of the year. Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and poet, was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in early January.
Trump speaks of ‘de-escalation’ in Minneapolis
US President Donald Trump earlier suggested his administration may take a more moderate course following the fatal shootings.
“We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News aired on Tuesday evening. He did not provide details, leaving open whether or to what extent the tactics of immigration officers, which have been sharply criticized by parts of the US population, would change.
Trump initially ruled out a withdrawal of forces from the US state of Minnesota, where Minneapolis is located.
Referring to the deaths of Pretti and Good, Trump said: “Bottom line, it was terrible. Both of them were terrible.”
No withdrawal of immigration officers
“I don’t think it’s a pullback,” Trump said regarding the departure of the controversial commander of the Border Patrol, Gregory Bovino, along with some border patrol officers from Minneapolis. “It’s a little bit of a change.”
“Border czar” Tom Homan has now been asked to take over the operation. Homan has a decades-long career in border protection agencies and is primarily associated with actions against irregular immigrants during Trump’s first term. He is controversial due to his role in the separation of families.
The US administration had sent thousands of federal officers to the city of Minneapolis and the surrounding state of Minnesota. The operations are part of Trump’s intensified deportation policy.
In the Fox News interview, Trump seemed to defend the operation in principle: “What they don’t say is that Minnesota has low numbers because of the fact that we took 1000s of hardened criminals out of Minnesota, so they had good crime numbers, believe it or not. And that’s all working out.”
GNA