BREAKINGShot in the Back: Border Patrol Killed an ICU Nurse on a Minneapolis Street

The federal government said Alex Pretti was a threat. Video says otherwise.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer on Saturday, March 22, on Nicollet Avenue. According to bystander footage reviewed by the Associated Press, his hands held only a cellphone as federal officers surrounded him, restrained him, and opened fire - including, witnesses say, as he lay on the ground.

In the hours before his family was notified of his death, the Department of Homeland Security posted a photograph of a 9mm handgun on X, framing the image as proof that Pretti had been dangerous. Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller called him "a would-be assassin." A top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles publicly declared that approaching law enforcement with a gun was justification for shooting.

The gun had already been removed from Pretti's holster by officers before the fatal shots were fired. Pretti had a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm in Minnesota. None of the half-dozen bystander videos reviewed by the AP shows him drawing or brandishing his weapon at any point.

This is the third fatal shooting by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in under three months. The pattern has produced a constitutional confrontation between state and federal authorities, triggered two No Kings protest waves with a third - expected to be the largest in American history - scheduled for this Saturday, and now sits at the center of a deepening political crisis for the Trump administration as polling shows 59 percent of Americans believe the Iran war has gone too far and a new batch of warning signs flashes ahead of November's midterms.

The Shooting: What Video Shows, What DHS Said

The immediate government account was emphatic. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said agents fired "defensive shots" after Pretti "approached" officers with a handgun and "violently resisted" when officers attempted to disarm him. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference that Pretti had shown up to "impede a law enforcement operation." She questioned why he was armed but offered no detail about whether he drew the weapon. Border Patrol senior official Greg Bovino went further, claiming Pretti wanted to "massacre law enforcement."

The videos tell a different story.

In bystander footage reviewed and verified by the Associated Press, protesters can be heard blowing whistles and shouting on Nicollet Avenue. The video shows a federal officer shoving a woman carrying a water bottle. Pretti - wearing a brown jacket, black hat - steps toward her. The two embrace briefly. The officer shoves Pretti in the chest. Both stumble.

Officers converge. Seven surround Pretti. One is on his back. Another strikes him in the chest with what appears to be a canister. Officers wrench his arms behind his back. One strikes him near the head several times. During the restraint, agents pull a handgun from his waistband area and begin moving away with it. Then a shot rings out. Then several more. Pretti falls motionless.

The gun visible in the DHS social media post - a 9mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic - appeared in the photograph already emptied and lying on a vehicle seat. One loaded magazine was visible, not two as DHS claimed. Minnesota state officials said that by removing the weapon from the scene before investigators arrived, Border Patrol officers likely mishandled key evidence.

"The evaluation of the reasonableness of this shooting will entirely depend on when the pistol became visible and how, if at all, it was being displayed or used. I don't think there's any evidence to confirm the official narrative at all." - Charles "Joe" Key, former police lieutenant and use-of-force expert

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and use-of-force expert who testified for prosecutors in the George Floyd murder trial, was direct: "In a country that has more guns than people, the mere possession of a weapon does not establish an imminent threat to officers - and neither does having a weapon and approaching officers."

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, framed the broader concern: "If a police chief had three officer-involved shootings in three weeks, they would be stepping back and asking, 'What does our training look like? What does our policy look like?'"

Alex Pretti: Who He Was

He grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin - played football, baseball, ran track at Preble High School. Was a Boy Scout. Sang in the Green Bay Boy Choir. Graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2011 with a degree in biology, society and the environment. Worked as a research scientist before going back to school to become a registered nurse. Had cared for veterans at the VA hospital where he worked. Had no criminal record beyond a handful of traffic tickets.

He had attended protests following the January 7 killing of Renee Good, another Minneapolis resident shot dead by an ICE officer in similar circumstances. He told his parents two weeks before his death that he knew to be careful, to protest but not engage physically.

"He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset. He thought it was terrible - kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests." - Michael Pretti, Alex's father, speaking to the Associated Press

Pretti lived alone in a four-unit condominium in Minneapolis. Neighbors described him as quiet, warmhearted - the kind of person who came downstairs if something felt wrong in the building, who would help if there was a gas leak scare. He lavished attention on his Catahoula Leopard dog, Joule. The dog had recently died too.

He owned guns - his neighbors knew he would occasionally go to a gun range - but the same neighbors said they never saw him carry on the street. "I never thought of him as a person who carried a gun," said Sue Gitar, who lived downstairs.

A video from 2024 that circulated after his death shows Pretti in navy scrubs, reading a salute for a veteran named Terrance Lee Randolph who died at the VA: "Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work for it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it."

His family found out he was dead when an Associated Press reporter called them. Federal officials had not contacted them. They watched the video. They recognized their son. They called the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, who confirmed they had a body matching his name and description. They had still heard nothing from any federal agency by Saturday evening.

"The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed." - Statement from the Pretti family

The Cover-Up Accusation: Blocking State Investigators

What happened after the shooting may prove as consequential as the shooting itself.

Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is the agency that investigates police-involved shootings in the state, obtained a signed judicial warrant granting them access to the shooting scene. Federal officers blocked them from entering anyway.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the BCA, confirmed this publicly at a news conference: his investigators were denied access to a scene for which they had a valid court order in hand. They were only able to begin work at the scene the following day.

State officials and county authorities then sued. A federal judge issued an emergency order prohibiting DHS from "destroying or altering evidence related to the fatal shooting involving federal officers." The hearing for that case was scheduled for Monday in federal court in St. Paul.

A critical piece of evidence - the video recorded on Pretti's phone at the moment he was killed - had not been released to state investigators or made public as of Sunday. Federal officials had not shared it with the BCA. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said he had seen no evidence that Pretti had brandished his weapon.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a formal call for the White House to convene discussions among federal, state and local law enforcement "as soon as practicable." That is an extraordinary public rebuke from the main national organization representing American police chiefs.

Seth Stoughton put it plainly: "Behind the scenes, there is nothing but professional scorn for the way that DHS is handling the aftermath of these incidents."

Pattern: Three Shootings, Three Months, One City

Pretti's killing is not an isolated incident. It is the third fatal or near-fatal shooting by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in less than three months - all in a compressed geography stretching barely more than a mile.

On January 7, ICE officer killed 37-year-old Renee Good in similar circumstances. Good also had no criminal record. That shooting sparked the first major wave of Minneapolis protests, which drew the National Guard to streets already taut with tension over the administration's immigration surge operations.

One week after Good's death, a federal officer shot a man in the leg after he was attacked with a shovel and broom handle while attempting to arrest a Venezuelan national in the country illegally. That incident was less disputed - the officer was physically attacked - but it added to the accumulating charge that federal forces were operating in Minneapolis without adequate discipline or oversight.

Pretti was shot just over a mile from where Good died. The same federal official who oversaw that operation - Border Patrol's Greg Bovino - was the public face of the response to Pretti's death as well. Initially, he called Pretti a would-be "massacre" planner. By Sunday, he was saying the shooting was "a tragedy that was preventable" and urging people not to speculate - a significant rhetorical retreat.

Trump's response was to attack state officials. He lashed out on social media at Governor Tim Walz and the Minneapolis mayor, accusing them of "inciting Insurrection" with "pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted that Walz "does NOT believe in law and order."

Walz, for his part, was direct: "President Trump, you can end this today. Pull these folks back. Do humane, focused, effective immigration control."

No Kings III: 9 Million Expected on Saturday

The killing of Alex Pretti has become the galvanizing event for the third wave of "No Kings" protests, scheduled for March 28 - this Saturday.

Organizers at Indivisible, the activist nonprofit co-founded by Ezra Levin, had already been planning demonstrations before the Pretti shooting. That event transformed the scale. Levin told the AP he expects as many as 9 million people to participate across more than 3,000 locations - which, if realized, would make it the largest single day of protest in American history by a significant margin.

The first No Kings wave, in June 2025, drew an estimated 4 million people across nearly 2,000 locations. The second, in October 2025, reached about 7 million people across 2,700 locations. Each wave has been larger than the last, and each has fed directly off a specific federal action that crystallized broader opposition to Trump's second term.

Roughly two-thirds of the more than 3,000 planned demonstrations will take place outside urban areas - a deliberate focus on suburban and rural organizing that reflects a broader shift in the resistance coalition. Organizers said sign-ups have been especially strong in suburban congressional districts with competitive 2026 races, including Scottsdale, Arizona; Langhorne, Pennsylvania; East Cobb, Georgia; and northern New Jersey's 11th district, which holds a special election April 7.

That suburban dimension is not incidental. It is the thread connecting the Minneapolis shootings, the No Kings movement, the Florida special election result, and the structural political danger now accumulating around Republican candidates who have tied themselves to Trump's agenda.

Allison Posner, a 42-year-old mother from Maplewood, New Jersey - a community that was Republican-leaning until recently - told the AP she will be leading a No Kings march through her town this Saturday. "The people in the suburbs are definitely radicalizing," she said. "I'm seeing people from the PTA or the neighborhood who would have never joined a protest in the past, who are now asking how they can get involved."

The Political Fallout: Flips, Polls, and Midterm Warning Signs

On Tuesday evening, a Democrat won a state legislative seat in a Florida district that includes Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach residence. That district had been won by a Republican by 19 percentage points in 2024. The Democrat, Emily Gregory - a first-time candidate who runs a fitness company for pregnant and postpartum women - won by 797 votes, or 2.4 percentage points.

It was the 29th seat that Democrats have flipped from Republican control since Trump returned to the White House, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Previous flips include a Miami mayoral race in December 2025 - the first Democrat to lead that city in nearly three decades - and a Texas state senate seat in January 2026.

Trump immediately distanced himself from the Florida result despite having personally endorsed the Republican candidate and urged Palm Beach voters to turn out. "I'm not involved in that," he posted - even though county voter records show he cast a mail ballot in the race, the same method he publicly opposes as a source of fraud.

A new AP-NORC poll, conducted March 19-23 with 1,150 adults, is the most direct measure yet of where public sentiment stands. About 59 percent of Americans say U.S. military action against Iran has gone too far. About 45 percent are "extremely" or "very" concerned about being able to afford gasoline in the coming months - up from 30 percent when Trump was re-elected with promises to lower the cost of living. Gas was averaging $3.12 a gallon when Biden left office and was just under $3 when the Iran war began. It now averages $3.98 according to AAA, a spike of nearly 33 percent in under a month.

Trump's overall approval rating holds at around 40 percent, but the convergence of the gas price spike, the ongoing government shutdown (now 40 days), TSA closure warnings at major airports, and the Minneapolis shootings represents a compressing political vise.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican from Alaska, said her constituents want to know the path forward in Iran and whether ground troops will be deployed. "There's a lot that people want to know," she said. "Whether it's how it's being communicated in the media, or how it's being communicated here in the Congress, I think it's lacking right now."

More Republican House candidates in competitive districts are distancing themselves from Trump's positions. Joe Hathaway, the Republican nominee in New Jersey's 11th district special election, initially refused to say whether he voted for Trump. He eventually acknowledged three votes for the president while insisting "NJ-11 comes first, before a president, before your party."

"If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what's possible this November." - Heather Williams, president, Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

The Institutional Reckoning

What is emerging from the Minneapolis shootings is something that goes beyond individual incidents. It is an institutional reckoning over whether federal agencies operating outside their traditional jurisdictions, often in unmarked vehicles and tactical gear, can be held accountable by any authority.

The blocking of state investigators with valid judicial warrants is the sharpest edge of that question. If federal law enforcement can physically prevent state officers from accessing a crime scene - even after a state judge has signed a warrant - then the constitutional architecture of shared sovereignty between federal and state governments is under direct strain.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara spelled out the operational consequence: "This is taking an enormous toll, trying to manage all this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It's too much."

The International Association of Chiefs of Police - not historically an anti-administration organization - has called publicly on the White House to convene emergency discussions among law enforcement. That is a statement of institutional alarm, not just policy disagreement.

The federal government's own accountability mechanism - a civil rights inquiry by the Department of Justice - is absent. The DOJ under Trump has not opened any review of the Minneapolis shootings. The administration has instead focused its DOJ energy on investigating the Federal Reserve and other perceived political adversaries.

That vacuum is now being filled by civil litigation, congressional pressure, and approximately 9 million people expected to march in 3,000 cities and towns this Saturday carrying signs that say, simply, No Kings.

Whether that pressure reaches inside the administration is uncertain. What is certain is that the body of 37-year-old Alex Pretti - an ICU nurse, a VA employee, a man who cared for veterans and walked his dog on Minneapolis streets and went to a gun range on weekends - is now at the center of a constitutional argument that will not resolve quietly.

His family said they have still not received a formal notification, explanation, or apology from any federal law enforcement agency. As of Thursday morning, more than three days after his death.

Sources: AP - "Man killed by Border Patrol was ICU nurse" | AP - "Videos show altercation" | AP - "Federal and state officials claim moral high ground" | AP-NORC Poll - Iran war public opinion | AP - Florida special election | AP - No Kings III protests