Questions swirl around federal government’s plan to investigate DHS shootings
The investigations launched by the Trump administration after immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis depart from longstanding government practices for investigating high-profile killings by law enforcement, according to local prosecutors and former federal officials.
Senior Trump administration officials were quick to say in the wake of the fatal shootings that immigration agents’ actions were justified, and said a deeper federal civil rights criminal investigation was not warranted at this time, raising questions about an independent investigation. Well, said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, had committed “domestic terrorism.” Pretti, said top Trump aide Stephen Miller, was a “potential assassin,” although eyewitness video contradicted those accounts.
And local authorities have been excluded from the investigation, raising questions about how evidence is handled.
“Nothing about what’s happening here is normal,” Clare Diegel, an attorney for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, said at a hearing in federal court Monday, after the county asked a judge to extend an order requiring Homeland Security officials to preserve evidence from the Pretti shooting.
“From a law enforcement perspective, this is astonishing,” Minnesota officials said in their court filing regarding evidence preservation. “The federal government’s actions are a radical departure from normal best practices and procedures, in which every effort is made to preserve the scene and the evidence contained therein. »
After their initial statements, Noem and other officials then highlighted ongoing investigations to determine what happened. And Trump himself on Tuesday promised a full investigation into Pretti’s death.
“We are carrying out a major investigation (…) I want a very honorable and honest investigation,” he declared. “I have to see it for myself.”
But Jason Houser, a former DHS counterterrorism official and ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration, said the shooting “should never be judged in the court of public opinion” but rather subject to independent review by multiple agencies. Anything less than that erodes trust in federal law enforcement, he said.
In the past, when Americans have been killed by members of law enforcement in high-profile incidents, the Justice Department has often launched investigations within days, banking on their public reputation and promises of independence to ease public tensions and ensure some form of accountability. This was the case, for example, after the murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
The FBI, which typically leads the investigations, emphasizes maintaining a working relationship with local law enforcement and, in most jurisdictions, would work collaboratively with local authorities to collect evidence and investigate the case.
However, in the Minneapolis shootings, the Justice Department took a back seat. The investigations are being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations and the Office of Professional Responsibility, assisted by the FBI, which has screened out local authorities.
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — which was typically responsible for determining whether a law enforcement officer should face criminal charges in a shooting — was gutted. And Attorney General Pam Bondi has downplayed investigations into police tactics, ordering lawyers to pursue prosecutions of protesters and “domestic terrorism” cases.
Not every use of deadly force by federal agents turns into a federal civil rights investigation. A Justice Department official insisted that investigations were being conducted as usual, telling NBC News that the DOJ could investigate civil rights violations “at a later time if the evidence presents itself.”
The Justice Department is focused on investigating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other Democratic state officials for their public comments on immigration operations, and investigating whether Becca Good, Renee Good’s partner, obstructed federal agents in the moments before the fatal shooting.
Walz and Frey said the investigations were purely political; Good’s attorney said she had not been contacted by law enforcement and was unaware of an investigation, but the attorney criticized the response to the shooting.
The handling of Good’s shooting led to multiple resignations from career federal prosecutors, as well as an FBI special agent.
The Justice Department’s credibility, as the DOJ’s own internal watchdog noted in a report released Monday, is critical to its mission. The Justice Department’s inspector general said the department “cannot succeed in its own mission” without the public’s trust, and that the DOJ “maintains the public’s trust by faithfully applying the law to the facts.”
Meanwhile, state authorities are trying to investigate despite a lack of cooperation from federal authorities.
There is a tangle of unanswered questions. In each shooting, the chaos involved multiple agents during immigration enforcement operations. Passersby recorded the events from the street. During the Pretti shooting, several officers had body cameras and the video is being analyzed.
On Tuesday, DHS sent an initial report to congressional committees on the internal investigation into Pretti’s death.
It details how officers sprayed Pretti and a woman in the road before attempting to arrest him, and that one officer shouted “He’s got a gun!” several times. Pretti was legally allowed to carry a firearm. Two immigration officers fired shots during the encounter.
