The invaluable news source Drop Site has obtained video that clearly shows Alex Pretti being murdered by a CBP agent while being pinned to the ground by other agents.

On Saturday, U.S. federal agents killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, shooting him multiple times at point blank range while pinned down prone on the ground and surrounded by officers along Nicollet Avenue. The Saturday killing—committed by a Customs and Border Protection agent—is the third shooting by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP in as many weeks, and comes just one day after tens of thousands of Minneapolis residents took to the streets in subzero temperatures to protest the federal raids in Minnesota.

Close-up video footage, obtained by Drop Site, shows one agent push a person to the ground and then deploy a chemical irritant twice on the 37-year-old Pretti, who had gone to help the person pushed. Around eight agents then swarm and wrestle him to the ground. One of the officers then visibly unholstered his gun and fired around four point-blank gunshots at Pretti, a Minnesota resident who was reportedly on the scene as an observer. There are ten gunshots heard in all—at least five of them were fired at Pretti from a distance, while the person holding the camera shouts, “What the fuck did you just do?”
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The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both CBP and ICE, alleged the man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and released a photo of the purported firearm, which appears to be a Sig Sauer Emperor Scorpion. No video has surfaced showing Pretti approaching federal agents with a brandished gun.

The videos can be seen at the link and, together with other videos taken by other witnesses, leave no doubt that the DHS is flat-out lying (no surprise in the Trump administration) and that this than was nothing other than murder. Eyewitnesses have given sworn testimonies contradicting the thugs’s story and that Pretti was carrying a camera and was trying to help a fallen person.

The gang of thugs that now run the government is discovering that killing ordinary, white, middle-class, middle-aged people is too much for many people to swallow. The fact that Pretti was carrying a gun in his back pocket was initially trumpeted by the ICE and Trump thugs, who pointed to it as evidence that he posed a threat to them and thus the shooting was justified, even though he had a permit to carry it.. But the video shows that the gun was taken from his pocket by an ICE agent. This has infuriated the NRA and other gun-rights groups who are protective of the right to carry guns and they have joined the chorus demanding an investigation. The Trump thugs want the highly compromised FBI to run the investigation but it is not clear that they can avoid the pressure to have an independent one.

As a result of the outcry, the thug Greg Bovino who had gone to Minnesota to oversee the ICE operation and paraded around in a great coat that was eerily similar to the ones worn by Nazi officers, has now been demoted and removed from the state.

After the initial posturing where they tried to brand Pretti and Good as domestic terrorists, Trump seems to be trying to walk back those sentiments, with his spokesperson claiming that Trump himself never said those things.

White House officials sought to rapidly distance Donald Trump and top officials from their initial portrayals of the man fatally shot by federal officials in Minnesota as a gunman, as they faced a deepening backlash after video footage was widely seen to undercut their assertions.

The move came as Trump advisers appeared to realize that the caustic portrayals of the man, Alex Pretti, who was reportedly licensed to carry a gun, had turned the killing into an even larger political liability for the president.

Over the weekend, senior administration officials including Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, called the victim “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement”, while Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused him of perpetrating “the definition of domestic terrorism”.

The characterizations were undercut by video footage that showed Pretti was shot in the back roughly 10 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.
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Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, separately tried to backpedal on behalf of the administration, telling Fox News: “I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism.”

The evolving positions at the White House were notable for how quickly they were changing and how reactive the administration was to a sudden freefall in support for ICE and US border patrol tactics across Washington, most notably among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, the public anger over these murders has resulted in some Republicans peeling away, though the top Republican leadership is hiding from the public and refusing to say anything because there is really nothing they can say. Meanwhile Democrats are threatening to not vote for further government funding if it does not remove funding from ICE, thus shutting down the government this Friday. (Yes, we are in yet another shutdown drama.)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Saturday night that Democrats would not help advance the six-bill spending package set for consideration next week as long as it includes DHS funding. Republicans will need Democratic support in order to clear a 60-vote hurdle to advance the funding bill.
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Congress has already passed full-year funding for some agencies — including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior and Justice — but not for several of the largest, including the Pentagon. Temporary funding for those departments, representing more than 75 percent of federal discretionary spending, expires midnight Friday.

Some of the six Democrats who switched their opposition to the earlier funding and thus ended that shutdown are saying that they will not do so again.

Earlier in the day, as news of the Minneapolis shooting spread, several Democratic senators who had previously voted to advance government funding measures under President Donald Trump vowed to oppose DHS funding this time. Funding for ICE and Border Patrol, the agencies involved in the Minnesota operation, is included in the pending Senate bill.

“I am voting against any funding for DHS until and unless more controls are put in place to hold ICE accountable,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) in a statement Saturday. “These repeated incidents of violence across the country are unlawful, needlessly escalatory, and making all of us less safe.”

Schatz helped advance a funding bill in March, and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who voted to end the 43-day shutdown in November, also both said Saturday that they will oppose the DHS funding bill.

Meanwhile, some judges are fed up with the defiance of ICE officials of court orders and are taking a harder line.

Minnesota’s top federal judge has summoned the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to appear before him on Friday, warning he may be held in contempt for allegedly defying court orders.

Chief US district judge Patrick Schiltz demanded ICE lead Todd Lyons explain himself personally in a three-page order issued Monday evening, declaring that “the court’s patience is at an end”.

Schiltz, appointed by George W Bush, accused the Trump administration of deliberately delaying or ignoring judicial directives across Minnesota’s federal courts. His order came in the case of a man he had ordered released on 15 January who remained in custody as of Monday night.
The judge said the government’s non-compliance had caused “significant hardship” to immigrants, many of whom had lived and worked legally in the United States for years. He described detained individuals being sent to Texas when they should remain in Minnesota, or being released far from home without means to return.

Other Minnesota federal judges have voiced similar concerns. US district judge Michael Davis, a Clinton appointee, accused the administration of attempting to “defy court orders” and “deny noncitizens their due process rights”.

Several judges are now considering broader legal challenges that could significantly restrict federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota or halt Operation Metro Surge entirely. Another federal judge is weighing whether the deployment of 3,000 immigration agents constitutes an unconstitutional occupation, a case that’s gained momentum following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal officers last week.

US district judge Kate Menendez has ordered government lawyers to respond by Wednesday evening to claims the operation was designed to punish the state for its sanctuary policies.

Schiltz also clashed with the administration last week when federal prosecutors sought his help arresting former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others linked to an anti-ICE church protest. After he declined to overturn a magistrate’s denial of arrest warrants, the justice department appealed directly to the eighth circuit court of appeals.

The circuit court rejected the government’s request, prompting Schiltz to write letters criticising the justice department’s approach and highlighting the flood of what he termed “illegal” detention cases overwhelming Minnesota courts.

Seeing his public support cratering, Trump will undoubtedly seek scapegoats. He reportedly had a two-hour meeting today with puppy-murderer Kristi Noem who is the head of the head of DHS, presumably to try to find a way to defuse the anger. I doubt that he will fire her, though.

That is the problem with the gang of thugs who are running the country. Since the person at the top is himself a thug, we cannot expect much improvement if he fires Noem because he will simply appoint someone else just like her to fill her position.