The Department of Justice is participating in a civil rights investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by two Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis amid a federal immigration crackdown.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stopped short of formally calling it a civil rights investigation, however, and declined to discuss the scope of what the FBI will be examining. He said he did not want to overstate the move, and instead characterized it as a “standard investigation by the FBI when there are circumstances like what we saw last Saturday.”
“And that investigation, to the extent it needs to involve lawyers at the civil rights division, it will involve those,” he said at a press conference.
Blanche said he would not commit to releasing any body camera footage of the shooting.
The announcement comes after the FBI on Friday said it would lead the investigation into Pretti’s shooting.
Previously, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations branch had been spearheading the probe, an unusual move according to current and former law enforcement officials. HSI is not typically tasked with investigating law enforcement shootings and does not have the equipment to handle such evidence, the officials said.
In response to news of the investigation, Walz said “Trump’s right hand cannot be responsible for investigating his left hand. We need an independent, impartial investigation now.”
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was the second U.S. citizen killed in Minneapolis by federal agents this month. Renee Good, a mother and poet, was killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
After Good’s shooting and the decision not to open a civil rights investigation into her death, several career prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, as well as in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota, resigned.
Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis earlier this week pressed the U.S. attorney over the lack of a civil rights investigation and warned that more resignations could come.
In a statement to WCCO, Pretti’s family attorney said “The family’s focus is on a fair and impartial investigation that examines the facts around his murder.”
