On Saturday morning, the white US citizen Pretti died when he was shot by federal officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The US government portrays the fatal shots as self-defense. Video footage of the scene online gives a different impression. The Obamas wrote: “The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy.” It should be a “wake-up call” to every American, regardless of party leanings, that many of our core values as a nation are now increasingly under attack. The Obamas emphasized that the federal side should actually work with local and state authorities to ensure public safety. “That’s exactly what we’re not seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.”
Democrat Obama, who was President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, also emphasized with his wife: “For weeks, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and using tactics that appear designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city.” These tactics resulted in two US citizens being shot. In addition to Pretti, the Obamas are referring to US citizen Renée Good, who was shot dead by an ICE immigration officer in Minneapolis in January.
After the fatal police shooting of a 37-year-old in Minneapolis, a border patrol official defended the officers with provocative statements. “The victims are the border guards,” said Gregory Bovino, who became known through the Trump administration’s deportation raids, to the US news channel CNN. “The suspect got himself into this situation. Moderator Dana Bash had previously asked Bovin whether he blamed the victim – the shot nurse Alex Pretti – for the incident. With his martial demeanor during raids, Bovin has become a face of US President Donald Trump’s tough deportation policy.
US Border Patrol agents shot Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday on the sidelines of a deportation raid. The Department of Homeland Security spoke of “defensive shots” by a federal officer because Pretti approached the police officers with a pistol. The Trump administration and law enforcement officials are portraying the incident as if Pretti, who had a firearms license and was allowed to carry a weapon, wanted to open fire on the federal police. The head of the US Federal Police FBI, Kash Patel, made similar comments on Sunday. “Nobody who wants to be peaceful comes to a protest with a gun with two magazines,” Patel told Fox News. “You can’t attack police officers in this country without consequences.”
