President Trump said his administration is reviewing the fatal shooting of an armed ICU nurse who was protesting ICE in Minneapolis before Border Patrol agents shot him dead in the street.
“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal in a five-minute phone call Sunday night, without providing his own ruling on whether the actions of the officer who shot the anti-ICE protester were justified.
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump added during the call. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
The slain protester, 37-year-old Alex Pretti, was carrying a loaded pistol during the fatal confrontation with federal agents. He had a concealed carry permit, according to Minnesota officials.
Trump called Pretti’s gun — a Sig Sauer P320 9mm pistol — a “very dangerous gun, a dangerous and unpredictable gun. It’s a gun that goes off when people don’t know it.”
Pretti, an ICU nurse for a veterans hospital, put himself between a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by federal agents and the agents. He was then sprayed himself, tackled by several agents, and bashed with an object, according to footage online.
Viral video of the struggle between the nurse and the federal officers appears to show an agent removing the pistol from Pretti’s waistband as others hold him on the ground, seconds before 10 shots can be heard.
Pretti’s body then goes limp as the agents scatter, the footage shows. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
The clip has raised questions of whether the pistol accidentally went off when retrieved by the agent — spooking the others and leading to the fatal shots.
Federal officials initially claimed that Pretti charged at ICE agents while armed with a gun, but videos taken by bystanders showed him approaching the middle of the road with his phone in hand.
The Department of Homeland Security, which said its agents acted in self-defense, is investigating the shooting with the help of the FBI.
A Minnesota judge quickly slapped a temporary restraining order barring federal officials from destroying or altering any evidence connected to the case.
Soon after the smoke settled, Trump quickly blamed Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!” Trump fumed on Truth Social Saturday. “These sanctimonious political fools should be looking for the Billions of Dollars that [have] been stolen from the people of Minnesota, and the United States.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the shooting of a 37-year-old anti-ICE protester in Minneapolis
Trump administration officials took up the call shortly after — including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, who called his agents “the victims” and speculated that Pretti had answered Democrats’ supposed calls to resist ICE.
Trump on Sunday also said he would eventually draw back the thousands of federal agents his administration flooded into the Twin Cities over the past month to address widespread, multibillion-dollar fraud allegations.
“At some point, we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he told the Journal.
He did not provide a timeline for their dismissal from Minnesota, but added that “a different group” would remain to continue investigations into rampant welfare fraud in the state, allegedly carried out by local immigrant communities.
“We’ll leave a different group of people there for the financial fraud,” the president said.
