Minnesota Medical Examiner Rules Alex Pretti's Death a Homicide

A county medical examiner's office in Minnesota on Monday ruled the death of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse fatally shot last month by Trump administration immigration enforcers in Minneapolis, a homicide.

The Hennepin County medical examiner said that Pretti's cause of death was homicide by multiple gunshot wounds. Homicide is a medical description that does not imply criminal wrongdoing; the Trump administration said last week that it has launched a civil rights probe into the January 24 incident in which agents shot Pretti seconds after disarming him of a legally carried handgun.

On Sunday, ProPublica revealed that US Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer Raymundo Gutierrez shot Pretti, who was reportedly known to federal officials after a previous encounter in which immigration enforcers allegedly broke his rib.

A physician who rushed to the scene of the shooting and tried to save Pretti's life said in a sworn statement that agents denied the victim medical care and instead "appeared to be counting his bullet wounds."

As they did with Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother and poet who was also shot dead by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis last month, President Donald rTrump and some of his senior officials attempted to smear Pretti as a “domestic terrorist”—a move consistent with the administration’s designation of left-wing activism as terrorism.

Last week, US District Court Judge Katherine Menendez—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—rejected a bid by state and local officials in Minnesota to halt Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration's name for the ongoing anti-immigrant blitz in the Twin Cities.

This, even as Menendez acknowledged that the operation "has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences," and that “there is evidence that ICE and CBP agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions."

Immigrant advocates renewed calls to end ICE and the Trump administration's broader anti-immigrant crackdown in the wake of the Minnesota medical examiner's homicide determination.

Author Chantal James took aim at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's Monday announcement that every officer with her department deployed to Minneapolis will be equipped with a body-worn camera.

"We didn't say bodycams on ICE," she wrote on Bluesky. "Their murders are already on video. We said no more ICE."

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whose district includes Minneapolis, said on Bluesky: "Abolish ICE. There’s no reforming it. There’s no compromise. There’s only one way to rein in ICE’s terror campaign. Abolish it."