Trump to send border tsar to Minnesota as calls grow for full inquiry into Alex Pretti shooting

Jack Grey
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

Since Trump began his second term as US president, he has significantly expanded the budget and mission of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), following through on a central promise in his election campaign.

Here’s a timeline of some key events of ICE’s presence in Minneapolis:

3 December – US President Donald Trump says Somali immigrants should “go back to where they came from” ahead of an enforcement operation in Minnesota’s large Somali community.

5 December – ICE announces it has arrested some of the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” in Minneapolis under what it calls “Operation Metro Surge”.

22 December – An ICE agent fires two shots at the car of an “undocumented immigrant from Cuba” who struck an agent with their car while attempting to flee, according to the Department of Homeland Security. No one was seriously injured.

6 January – The Trump administration prepares to deploy as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a sweeping crackdown.

7 January – Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, is shot dead by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, sparking widespread protests. Federal officials said Good had tried to run over immigration agents with her car but the city mayor said the agent who shot her had acted recklessly.

14 January – Venezuelan national Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis is non-fatally shot in Minneapolis during an arrest by federal agents, who say he resisted and began to “violently assault” the agents.

24 January – US citizen Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, is shot dead by a federal agent in Minneapolis, leading to conflicting reports between state and federal authorities about the reasons why.

25 January – Trump does not answer if he believes the officer that shot Pretti did the right thing, and says his administration is “reviewing everything”. He adds that he doesn’t like when someone goes to a protest with a “fully loaded gun” – but local authorities say the firearm was legally registered and Pretti was shot after it was removed.