US President Donald Trump walked back his conciliatory tone on Friday after outrage over the killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis by federal agents, branding one of them, Alex Pretti, an “agitator.”
Footage shared online this week reportedly showed intensive care nurse Pretti in a scuffle with federal agents 11 days before he was shot dead on Saturday by officers enforcing an immigration crackdown.
The White House has scrambled to stem widespread outrage over Pretti’s killing, which came weeks after Renee Good, another US citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot by agents in the same city.
Trump claimed he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” in the fallout of the killings and appointed a new point man in Minneapolis, border chief Tom Homan, who said on Thursday that some federal agents could be withdrawn from the city after weeks of protests against immigration raids.
On Friday, the US president said Pretti, 37, was an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist,” on his Truth Social platform.
“Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer,” Trump wrote, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
The video reportedly shows Pretti kicking the taillight of the federal agents’ car, before they emerge and tackle him to the ground.
AFP could not immediately verify the footage.
Government shutdown
Backlash over the deaths of Pretti and Good has landed in Congress, with the Senate edging closer to a vote on Friday on a funding deal to avert a government shutdown over the crisis.
Democrats have drawn a red line around funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), demanding it be stripped out and renegotiated to impose new constraints on immigration enforcement agencies.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman urged more tech figures to “speak out” on Thursday against the Trump administration’s “excesses” after the killings, which have had a global impact.
“We in Silicon Valley can’t bend the knee to Trump. We can’t shrink away and just hope the crisis will fade,” Hoffman wrote in an opinion piece Thursday in The San Francisco Standard.
Trump held a cabinet meeting that same day, but the Minnesota unrest did not come up while reporters were in the room, and he did not call on Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem when asking some officials to give remarks.
Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to take control of immigration operations with orders to report directly to him, effectively sidelining Noem.
Improvements needed
Homan said at his first news conference in the Minnesota city on Thursday that “certain improvements could and should be made,” a marked difference from his predecessor Greg Bovino, who was removed.
He urged Minnesotans to avoid “hateful rhetoric” against federal immigration officers.
He said his staff was “working on a drawdown plan” for some of the more than 3,000 federal agents who have been taking part in “Operation Metro Surge.”
One such measure, for example, would be notifying ICE agents about the release dates of incarcerated migrants considered “criminal public safety risks” so they could be detained by the agency, he said.
“This is commonsense cooperation that allows us to draw down on the number of people we have here,” Homan said.
Steven Gagner, a 41-year-old jewelry designer and “citizen observer” in Minneapolis, was skeptical about the drawdown.
“This administration has proven time and time again that they just lie to us and they do not really hold themselves or anyone else accountable,” he told AFP.
The two agents involved in Pretti’s shooting have been placed on leave, and Homan said any federal agents who breach standards of conduct “will be dealt with”.
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