Republicans Push Back on Party Line on ICE and Minneapolis Shooting

After a Border Patrol agent shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis over the weekend, some Republicans are beginning to speak out against the Trump administration’s actions.

“ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said Sunday. “Lawfully carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American—especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed.“

Senators Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Bill Cassidy are all calling for independent investigations into the shooting. In a post on X Saturday night, Cassidy said, “The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing.”

“The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth,” Cassidy posted.

Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, went so far as to suggest that President Trump remove ICE agents from Minneapolis..

“If I were President Trump, I would almost think about, OK, if the mayor and governor are going put our ICE officials in harm’s way and there’s a chance of losing more innocent lives, or whatever, then maybe go to another city and let the people of Minneapolis decide: Do we want to continue to have all of these illegals?” Comer said Sunday on Fox News, adding that he expected Minnesotans to “rebel against their leadership.”

On Sunday, Representative Andrew Garabino, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, called on DHS, ICE, and Border Patrol leaders to testify before his committee, drawing praise from his GOP colleague Representative Michael Baumgartner, who said it was important “the American people and Congress be given a better understanding of how immigration enforcement is being handled.”

Many Republicans are concerned that ICE’s violence, coupled with the rest of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed policies, will hurt them in midterm elections this year. Representative Dusty Johnson, who is running for governor in South Dakota, called for deescalation, in an X post Sunday. *

“Politicians, protesters, and law enforcement all have an obligation to deescalate the situation in Minnesota. As with any officer-involved shooting, this demands a thorough investigation,” Johnson posted.

One House Republican told Politico anonymously, “Many of us wonder if the administration has any clue as to how much this will hurt us legislatively and electorally this year.”

It may be a small fraction of Republicans right now, but cracks are beginning to form as Trump’s actions are going too far even for members of his own party. The resistance from Minnesota is working. Will the Trump administration back down, or make things worse?

* An earlier version of this post misstated in which state Johnson is running for governor.

Federal immigration agents shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident on Saturday morning, the second time this month that federal agents killed a civilian.

Video of the incident shows at least seven masked agents working to tackle the man to the ground before shooting him. “What the fuck?” an outraged bystander yells in the video. “Did they fucking kill that guy?”

A second video appears to show the moments before the man was tackled. He was standing in the street, filming an agent at close range with his cell phone. The agent then pushed him toward the curb.

This is the second time federal agents have killed a resident in the city, and the third time they shot one. ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in south Minneapolis on January 7. Another ICE agent shot and wounded Julio Cesar Sosa Celis in north Minneapolis a week later as they tried to apprehend him.

The Department of Homeland Security says the man who was killed Saturday was armed, though it remains unclear what led to the shooting as well as whether he was actually holding a gun when he was shot.

Minneapolis Council Member Aisha Chughtai, who represents the area where the shooting occurred, posted on X that more than 100 ICE and Border Patrol agents were present at the scene, and that they “deployed chemical irritants in one of the most dense neighborhoods” in the city.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called for an end of the federal government’s anti-immigrant operation in his state. “I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening,” he posted on X. “The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

ICE beat, cuffed, and jailed an army veteran and Purple Heart recipient for protesting in Minneapolis—and then the Department of Homeland Security lied about his charges.

On Friday, ABC News reported that 39-year-old William Vermie was arrested while watching ICE agents go after two young men in his community. He was taken to the Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where he said he was detained for eight hours and never given the opportunity to call a lawyer.

“They read me my rights and asked me if I wanted to answer any questions without a lawyer, and I said no,” Vermie told ABC News. “And then they said, ‘You’ll have an opportunity to contact one later.’”

“I have privilege,” Vermie added. “I was medically retired, I’m a combat vet, I’m white, I’m middle class. If I can’t advocate for people who need it, then who else is going to do it? Who else is going to stand up and speak truth to power?”

The DHS used its X account to call Vermie a liar after his story was published.

“FACT CHECK. This individual was arrested for assaulting a law enforcement officer—a felony and a federal crime. All detainees have the opportunity to communicate with their family and lawyer,” the agency wrote. “These smears from the media have directly lead to a 1,347% increase in assaults on DHS law enforcement and a 8,000% uptick in death threats.”

In reality, as ABC reported, no charges against Vermie were filed. Bystander video shows Vermie’s arrest on the sidewalk but doesn’t capture evidence that he assaulted an agent.

This is not a fact-check; it’s just another baseless claim from an administration that believes enough of its citizens are gullible enough to buy whatever version of reality it’s selling. People at the highest levels of government, from the president on down, have lied profusely to us about what has occurred this month in Minnesota, and for months in the rest of the country.

A top Homeland Security official is insisting that the American public trust the Trump administration with their children—even as reports circulate that ICE and Customs and Border Protection have detained multiple children in Minnesota.

Greg Bovino, a senior tactical commander for the U.S. Border Patrol, practically boasted about his agency’s ability to deal with children during a press conference Friday on the department’s Minneapolis operations, attempting to brush reports of child detentions under the rug by sharing anecdotes about officers playing soccer with locked-up kids.

“Here in the U.S. Border Patrol, I will say unequivocally that we are experts in dealing with children,” Bovino said. “Not because we want to be, but because we have to be.”

Later in the press conference, while crowing that both CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “probably the most experienced [law enforcement agencies] anywhere in the United States” when dealing with children, the Border Patrol chief suggested that circumstances are not so dire for children in detention centers.

“I know that in my particular Border Patrol sector—that saw thousands of individuals coming across the border during that last administration, including hundreds of children—I remember our agents in the back parking lot playing soccer matches with those children.

“I would challenge any law enforcement agency to show me the fantastic care that ICE and U.S. Border Patrol provide children,” he added, before warning people to not commit crimes lest they have to deal with his agency.

Bovino further compared the family separations to those experienced by U.S. citizens when parents are arrested by local law enforcement—though the difference there is that police are constitutionally required to have probable cause that an individual committed a crime before they arrest them.

Reports emerged Thursday that ICE had also detained at least four Minnesota children, one of whom was a 5-year-old preschooler, Liam Ramos, who was abducted by masked agents in his driveway shortly after he and his father arrived home. ICE also detained a 2-year-old at a traffic stop in Minneapolis.

Just hours after Bovino recounted his dystopian, rather than feel-good, story about detained children, another report emerged that immigration agents had grabbed a child. ICE detained a family of three, including a 7-year-old girl, outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, last week. The girl’s parents had been rushing her to emergency medical care after she had a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop.

ICE’s violent and relatively untrained militias, meanwhile, have been expressly permitted to operate with impunity by the Trump administration, allowing them to harass, batter, and kill their neighbors with little recourse.

It has become glaringly obvious over the course of the last year (or even just this last week) that the Trump administration’s pledge to focus on deporting violent criminals was little more than centrist lip service. In reality, immigration agents have arrested practically anybody in order to meet Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 or more arrests per day.

A winter storm is set to hit much of the country this weekend, and naturally, the Federal Emergency Management Association is sending out warnings to make sure people are safe.

But they aren’t allowed to use the word “ice” in any of their messaging because their superiors at the Department of Homeland Security are worried about internet mockery thanks to the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CNN reports.

DHS, which oversees both ICE and FEMA, told workers at the latter agency Thursday that phrases like “watch out for ice” could be misunderstood or turn into viral memes, considering the negative headlines ICE agents are producing in Minnesota and across the country.

“If FEMA says, ‘Keep off the roads if you see ice,’ it would be easy for the public to meme it,” an unnamed source told CNN. “I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set. If we can’t use clear language to help prepare Americans, then people may be left vulnerable and could suffer.”

FEMA staff have been told to use words like “freezing rain” instead, according to the source, although a FEMA spokesperson denied the report Friday in a statement.

“‘Reporting’ like this reads like a desperate ploy for clickbait rather than real journalism that actually gives Americans disaster preparedness information that could save lives. FEMA will use correct and accurate descriptors of weather conditions to communicate clearly to the American people,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

It’s hilarious that the Trump administration is worried about using the word “ice,” showing some degree of self-awareness about the negative attention its immigration crackdown is creating. Ice is a major hazard created by winter weather, and the public should still receive warnings regardless of whether they’ll be turned into jokes mocking ICE. If officials are that worried, perhaps the problem lies with ICE.