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'Americans have died': Fetterman calls for Trump to fire Noem
Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on Donald Trump to immediately fire Kristi Noem after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, said in a statement:
President Trump: I make a direct appeal to immediately fire Secretary Noem. Americans have died. She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy. DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary.
Unlike others in his party, Fetterman has broadly defended some aspects of Trump’s border policy and was one of seven Democrats who voted to confirm Noem as DHS secretary last year. He has also said he would not risk a partial government shutdown at the end of this week by voting to block DHS funding.
But he has joined other Democrats in criticizing federal actions in Minneapolis. In a statement yesterday, he called for a halt to so-called “Operation Metro Surge”. “Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti should still be alive. My family grieves for theirs,” he said.
The operation in Minneapolis should stand down and immediately end. It has become an ungovernable and dangerous urban theatre for civilians and law enforcement that is incompatible with the American spirit.
Other Democrats have called for Noem’s impeachment or resignation after she branded Pretti a “domestic terrorist” without evidence. While the White House insisted yesterday that Noem still has Trump’s “utmost confidence and trust”, press secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced the president from Noem’s rhetoric. “I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretti in that way,” she said, adding that Trump wanted the investigation “to play out”.
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'We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street': Biden says Minneapolis violence 'betrays our most basic values'
Former president Joe Biden has condemned the “senseless” killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti as betraying “our most basic values as Americans”, and praised the people of Minnesota for “speaking out against injustice when they see it”.
“What has unfolded in Minneapolis this past month betrays our most basic values as Americans,” Biden said in a post on X. “We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street. We are not a nation that allows our citizens to be brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights. We are not a nation that tramples the 4th Amendment and tolerates our neighbors being terrorized.”
Biden said Minnesotans protesting the federal government’s immigration crackdown have “reminded us what it is to be American, and they have suffered enough at the hands of this Administration”.
“The people of Minnesota have stood strong — helping community members in unimaginable circumstances, speaking out against injustice when they see it, and holding our government accountable to the people,” he wrote.
Biden did not mention Donald Trump by name, but alluded to the president, before calling for a “full, fair, and transparent investigation” into the killings.
Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.
No single person can destroy what America stands for and believes in, not even a President, if we — all of America — stand up and speak out. We know who we are. It’s time to show the world. More importantly, it’s time to show ourselves.
Now, justice requires full, fair, and transparent investigations into the deaths of the two Americans who lost their lives in the city they called home.
‘A militia that kills’: uproar in Italy over ICE security role at Winter Olympics
Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Jakub Krupa
A unit of US immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) will have a security role in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Italy, sparking uproar and petitions against the deployment.
Sources at the US embassy in Rome confirmed a statement from ICE, the agency embroiled in a brutal immigration crackdown in the US, saying that federal agents would support diplomatic security details during the Milan-Cortina games but would not run any enforcement operations.
The statement said: “At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is supporting the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organisations. All security operations remain under Italian authority.”
Speculation over ICE’s involvement in the games fuelled outrage in Italy over ICE’s immigration operations, especially after the fatal shootings this month of the US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala, told RTL radio that the agents would not be welcome in the city “because they don’t guarantee they’re aligned with our democratic security management methods”.
This is a militia that kills. It’s clear that they are not welcome in Milan, there’s no doubt about it. Can’t we just say no to Trump for once?
We can take care of their security ourselves. We don’t need ICE.
Two small opposition parties – the Green and Left Alliance (AVS) and Azione – have started petitions calling on the Italian government and the Olympics organising committee to prevent the ICE agents’ entry and involvement in the security operations. AVS said:
ICE is the militia that shoots people on the streets of Minneapolis and takes children away from their families.
Read the full report here:
Rand Paul calls for officers involved in Pretti shooting to be put on administrative leave 'immediately'
Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate homeland security committee, has said that the officers involved in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti should “immediately” be placed on administrative leave “until an independent investigation is concluded”.
Paul, of Kentucky, wrote on X:
Local police routinely, put officers involved in deadly shootings on administrative leave until an independent investigation is concluded. That should happen immediately. I can’t recall ever hearing a police chief immediately describing the victim as a ‘domestic terrorist’ or a ‘would-be assassin’.
For calm to be restored, an independent investigation is the least that should be done.
Yesterday, he summoned three top immigration enforcement officials - Rodney Scott, the commissioner of CBP; Joseph Edlow, director of USCIS; and Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE - to testify before his panel on 12 February.
US border patrol commander Greg Bovino said on Sunday that the agents that were involved in the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing were still working “not in Minneapolis, but in other locations, that’s for their safety”.
'Americans have died': Fetterman calls for Trump to fire Noem
Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on Donald Trump to immediately fire Kristi Noem after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, said in a statement:
President Trump: I make a direct appeal to immediately fire Secretary Noem. Americans have died. She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy. DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary.
Unlike others in his party, Fetterman has broadly defended some aspects of Trump’s border policy and was one of seven Democrats who voted to confirm Noem as DHS secretary last year. He has also said he would not risk a partial government shutdown at the end of this week by voting to block DHS funding.
But he has joined other Democrats in criticizing federal actions in Minneapolis. In a statement yesterday, he called for a halt to so-called “Operation Metro Surge”. “Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti should still be alive. My family grieves for theirs,” he said.
The operation in Minneapolis should stand down and immediately end. It has become an ungovernable and dangerous urban theatre for civilians and law enforcement that is incompatible with the American spirit.
Other Democrats have called for Noem’s impeachment or resignation after she branded Pretti a “domestic terrorist” without evidence. While the White House insisted yesterday that Noem still has Trump’s “utmost confidence and trust”, press secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced the president from Noem’s rhetoric. “I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretti in that way,” she said, adding that Trump wanted the investigation “to play out”.
Kyle Rittenhouse has urged gun owners to “carry everywhere” in the wake of criticism from the Trump administration over Alex Pretti having a gun on his person when he was fatally shot by federal immigration officials in Minnesota on Saturday.
“Carry everywhere,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “It is your right.” Per my colleague Ramon Vargas, this comes of course after Rittenhouse shot two people to death during 2020 protests in Wisconsin ignited by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot Renee Good and Pretti this month. He was later tried on but acquitted of various felonies, including first-degree intentional homcide, having argued that he acted in justifiable self-defense.
On Sunday we reported that the National Rifle Association (NRA) had joined other gun lobbying and advocacy groups that are typically aligned with Donald Trump in calling for the Republican president’s administration to conduct a “full investigation” into the killing of Pretti. The 37-year-old ICU nurse was legally permitted to carry a gun and is a citizen of the US, where there is a constitutional right to bear arms.
More on that here:
'If you give us the criminals, it all goes away,' Trump tells Minnesota leaders
In an interview on on WABC radio’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning”, Donald Trump has said that his calls with Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey were “very good” and “very respectful.”
Asked about the possibility of a compromise with Minnesota officials, Trump replied: “I think so.” He added:
What we need is their criminals. You know, they have criminals. And all I said, ‘Just give us your criminals. And if you give us the criminals, it all goes away.’ They’re there to pick up murderers.
Walz said in a statement yesterday that in his phone call with the president he reminded him that “the Minnesota Department of Corrections already honors federal detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen.”
The governor implored Trump on Sunday to withdraw federal agents from his state, saying: “President Trump, you can end this today. Pull these folks back; do humane, focused, effective immigration control – you’ve got the support of all of us to do that. Please show some decency. Pull these folks out.”
Police have told CNN that approximately 26 people were arrested last night after dozens of protesters gathered at a hotel in Minneapolis where border patrol commander Greg Bovino was believed to be staying.
Bovino has become the public face of the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minnesota, and calls for him to be kicked out of the city have grown after federal agents killed ICE nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday. Bovino – who is expected to depart Minneapolis today – has been condemned for claiming baselessly that Pretti had been planning to “massacre law enforcement officers”.
Melania Trump calls for unity after fatal shootings in Minnesota
Melania Trump has called for “unity” in the wake of the fatal federal law enforcement shootings of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and widespread peaceful protests this month.
Asked about the tensions in Minneapolis on Fox News this morning, the first lady said:
We need to unify. I’m calling for unity. I know my husband, the president, had a great call yesterday with the governor and the mayor, and they’re working together to make it peaceful and without riots.
It marks a rare comment on current events from the first lady since Donald Trump took office for the second time last year.
“I’m against the violence. So please if you protest, protest in peace, and we need to unify in these times,” she said.
Chris Stein
The leader of Congress’s progressive caucus yesterday called for Democratic senators to demand “real reforms” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before voting for a key spending bill, and warned that Republicans would take the blame if the standoff sparks another government shutdown.
The call from Greg Casar, the Texas congressman who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, comes after the Saturday killing of US citizen Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis upset delicate negotiations in Congress intended to keep the government running beyond Friday, when the current spending authorization expires.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has said his party will not provide the votes necessary to advance a measure funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), noting that it includes funding for ICE, which is among the federal agencies that has flooded Minneapolis in the weeks leading up to Pretti’s killing.
More here:
Investigators reviewing body camera footage in fatal shooting of Alex Pretti
Federal investigators are reviewing body camera videos from immigration agents in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to NBC News yesterday.
Homeland security investigators have videos recorded by cameras worn by multiple agents, department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, adding that the agents involved were part of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, a specialized force. Two law enforcement officials told NBC News that unit has more body-worn cameras.
The New York Times hears the same, quoting a statement from the DHS that says:
There is body camera footage from multiple angles, which investigators are currently reviewing.
‘It’s about freedom of the press’: photographer tackled by ICE throws camera to save it
Last week, John Abernathy, an the independent photographer, was tackled to the ground by federal immigration agents during a protest in Minneapolis. He said he threw his camera in the hope of saving his photographs because the images of the protests ‘deserve to be seen’.
The Department of Homeland Security told CNN Abernathy had been arrested for obstructing pedestrian and vehicle traffic on federal property. Images of his arrest, in which he tossed his Leica camera to prevent agents from confiscation his documentation of the protest, have been circulating the Internet as a sign of the authoritarian reach of the Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“I think it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen here before. It’s a different kind of aggression somehow, against people who are using their right to speak,” Abernathy told the Guardian.
As the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, Donald Trump is scheduled today to travel to Iowa to shore up political support amid growing anxiety over weak crop prices.
As the nation’s largest producer of corn, hogs and ethanol, Iowa is critical to Trump’s rural coalition.
Lance Lillibridge, a 56-year-old corn and cattle farmer, told Reuters that though he would describe himself as a Trump supporter “for the most part”, he and other farmers have been hit hard by the trade war with China and rising costs of seeds and fertilizer.
“There’s going to have to be something because right now everything’s just terrible. I’ve never been so cash poor in my entire life,” Lillibridge said, adding that he hopes the administration will pursue another multibillion-dollar farm bailout.
Analysis: The rise and fall of Gregory Bovino, US border patrol’s menacing provoker-in-chief
Robert Tait
Critics have called him a would-be Napoleon and mocked his “Nazi” aesthetic, but with Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant surge into Minneapolis, Gregory Bovino seemed to have found the political moment he had long been seeking.
Bovino, 55, a senior US border patrol official, initially rose to prominence as the figurehead of immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.
But his provocatively unapologetic utterances in Minneapolis after the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American citizen, by border patrol officers propelled him to a new level of notoriety that finally exceeded the tolerance even of the Trump administration.
With the White House under intense pressure amid a fierce backlash against Pretti’s fatal shooting, Bovino – rather than being lionised – has become an early casualty of the Trump administration’s efforts to change its posture. Officials revealed that he was to be withdrawn from his frontline role in the midwestern city. He was expected to be pulled out as Tom Homan, Trump’s “border tsar”, was sent in to oversee the operation on the ground.
The Guardian’s George Chidi, Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino report that the efforts of Donald Trump to deploy militarized immigration agents in US cities may finally be reaching a reckoning following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis.
Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis said the administration would begin to scale back the number of federal agents in Minneapolis starting on Tuesday, a day after a federal judge heard arguments about whether to end the federal officer surge in the city.
More here:
Here are some images coming out of Minneapolis overnight over the wires:
White House avoids Minneapolis tirade as signs suggest Trump backing down
David Smith
What Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, did not say on Monday was more important than what she did.
When Leavitt stepped up to the briefing room podium to address the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, she avoided the kind of victim-blaming tirade that has become de rigueur for Donald Trump’s administration.
Instead the spokeswoman called Pretti’s death a “tragedy”, said the US president wanted to let the investigation take its course, and, strikingly, refused to endorse adviser Stephen Miller’s slander of Pretti as a “would-be assassin”.
Bovino to leave Minneapolis as White House walks back initial claims about Alex Pretti
Hello and welcome to our live coverage.
Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander, is expected to leave Minneapolis today following the weekend killing of Alex Pretti, the second civilian to be fatally gunned down in the streets by federal immigration agents this month.
Bovino, an aggressive promoter of Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, has become the public face of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota – and a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists.
An unnamed source told Reuters that Bovino had been stripped of his specially created title of “commander at large” of the border patrol, but the Department of Homeland Security has pushed back on the demotion reports. “Chief Gregory Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, pointing to earlier comments from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, praising Bovino as a “key part of the president’s team and a great American”.
Leavitt spent Monday’s press briefing walking back initial claims made by senior administration officials about Pretti. Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, called the victim “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement”, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused him of perpetrating “the definition of domestic terrorism” – characterizations that have been undercut by video footage that showed Pretti getting shot in the back multiple times after being tackled to the ground by a group of US border patrol agents whom he had been filming, and disarmed of his gun.
Trump himself on Monday said he had a “a very good call” with Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, who he had perviously blamed for Pretti’s death. Walz said on X that he had a “productive” call with Trump, who had agreed to look at pulling federal agents out of the state and committed to talking to DHS about allowing the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation into the shootings by federal agents, which would include the one earlier this month that killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman and mother of three.
More to come.
