After a reporter questioned Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday about the gun the Trump administration claimed Alex Pretti “approached” ICE agents with in order to harm them, Noem skirted around giving a direct answer.
While DHS has argued that Pretti was an armed man provoking violence, videos of the incident and sworn affidavits contradict DHS statements that the shots fired by Border Patrol agents were done so “defensively.”
In the clips that have been circulating online, none of the footage appears to show Pretti with a weapon — only a phone in his hand. Pretti, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, was shot several times by ICE agents Saturday after they discovered he was carrying a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, according to The Associated Press.
“Did the 37-year-old, who had a license to carry, did he brandish a gun?” the reporter asked Noem during a press conference on Saturday. “And at what point did law enforcement retrieve the gun? And also the magazines from him?”
Avoiding answering directly, Noem replied, “This individual showed up to impede a law enforcement operation and assaulted our officers. They responded according to their training and took action to defend the officer’s life and those of the public around him.”
Telling the reporter that she doesn’t know of “any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” she added, “This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.”
The reporter didn’t back down, pressing Noem for further clarification.
“Video appears to show he’s disarmed before shots are fired, so I just want clarity on that,” she told Noem before also questioning why federal agents told the Minneapolis Police Department to leave the scene after the incident.
Noem responded, “We’re continuing to follow the exact same protocols that we always have and so this investigation is ongoing. We’re continuing to gather the facts as they unfold throughout that, and we’ll do it just like we did under the entire Trump administration and previous administrations.”
Claiming “nothing has changed” within the agency, Noem then told the reporter that she should “not distract away from the facts of this situation,” and DHS will “continue to release details as we have them.”
“Our law enforcement officers were there doing a targeted operation against an individual who was in this country illegally and had a criminal conviction for domestic assault with intent to do bodily harm and other convictions as well,” Noem continued.
She added: “This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers coming, brandishing like that, and impeding their work that they were doing.”
Noem’s remarks came after Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino accused Pretti of wanting to do “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” and claimed officers had followed their training in the incident.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey decried Saturday that in the video of the incident that he saw, he witnessed “more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents, shooting [Pretti] to death.”
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end? How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realizes that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values?” Frey added.