Alex Pretti was killed by a CBP agent. That's not a matter up for debate. Everyone agrees that there was no sniper on the grassy knoll that really killed him or anything like that. Beyond that, there's a lot of debate as to what happened.
And the Trump administration isn't helping things in the least.
See, it's one thing to stand by federal law enforcement. As a whole, that's precisely what should happen. These agents work for the administration, after all, and they need to see the administration as ultimately being on their side.
But as Robby Soave notes at Reason, the administration is also going way too far in that direction.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents shot and killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, outside a restaurant on Saturday. The victim, 37-year-old Alex Pretti, was licensed to carry a firearm, and he had one with him. The available footage does not show every detail of what happened, but Pretti was holding a cell phone rather than his gun when the officers initiated contact and began wrestling him to the ground.
Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have already declared the killing completely justified, claiming that Pretti had intended to murder law enforcement agents. There is no evidence of this—none whatsoever—which makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the administration is prepared to brazenly lie about what happened.
Other Republican officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and FBI Director Kash Patel, are taking the position that merely bringing a gun to a protest is a violation of the law or an indication of murderous intent. This is deeply wrong, and it is in conflict with the First and Second Amendments—two fundamental rights that Republicans typically profess to care about.
As with the killing of Renee Good two weeks ago, the legal threshold at which lethal force can be justified is whether the officer who killed Pretti reasonably feared for his own safety. Only a careful, impartial investigation can determine that. The Justice Department has declined to conduct such an investigation into Good's death, instead seeking to investigate the victim's family.
Video footage of Pretti's death shows federal agents using pepper spray on protesters. Pretti appears to be recording the altercation with his cell phone. After an agent shoves one of the protesters to the ground, Pretti moves to assist her. Several CBP agents then decide to bring Pretti down.
It's conceivable that the agent who shot Pretti had the impression that he was reaching for his weapon—though the first shot clearly went off after another agent disarmed the protester. It's also possible that the killer didn't have even that much justification. Yet federal authorities have all but ruled out that possibility, and are making abjectly false statements in support of their mendacious posture.
Too many people are latching onto Pretti carrying spare magazines as evidence he was up to something, which is troubling since I carry spare magazines all the time, too.
The truth of the matter is that an investigation needs to be carried out, and the agent either prosecuted or fully cleared after the facts of the case are made public. This is what happens after an officer-involved shooting, in part due to transparency concerns. If a law enforcement agency just shrugs off officer-involved shootings as if they're automatically justified, people are going to start thinking that cops have a license to kill.
And that's why an investigation needs to happen here. Luckily, it is.
I disagree with Soave about Renee Good, though, because we all saw the car hit the agent in question, so I don't see that as some iffy shooting, but even then, I agree that the procedures need to be followed. Even if it's obviously a good shoot, the investigation should be automatic, if for no other reason than not to cast doubt automatically upon those who use deadly force in less obvious circumstances.
For people like Noem, Patel, and Miller to default to "he had it coming" is troubling, especially if he never actually touched his firearm.
Of course, I've heard reports that he was disarmed, but Pretty had a Sig P320, which is known to just go off. If so, it's entirely possible the agent who shot him reacted to a gunshot, though Pretti was still armed and fired.
If so, that might make it a justifiable shoot from his perspective, but we need the administration to stop automatically assuming federal agents can do no wrong, especially by claiming that the presence of a firearm made Pretti a target all on its own.
The Second Amendment doesn't work like that.
