DHS reviewing bodycam videos after killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis

Investigators are reviewing footage from body cameras worn by several federal immigration enforcement officers during the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, according to a Department of Homeland Security official.

“There is body camera footage from multiple angles,” the DHS official confirmed to MS NOW on Monday.

The killing of Pretti by immigration officers sparked clashes between protesters and officers near the scene. Trump administration officials said the DHS officer who shot Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm at the time of his death, was acting in self-defense. But eyewitness videos of the shooting verified by MS NOW directly contradict the administration’s claims that Pretti was acting as a violent aggressor who posed a threat to the officers.

Body camera footage could give clarity to the conflicting accounts of events as the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by immigration officers in recent weeks forces a reckoning with the administration’s sweeping immigration agenda. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot to death in her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer blocks from her Minneapolis home on Jan. 7.

Also on Monday, President Donald Trump said he had a “very good call” with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. News of the phone call came shortly after Trump announced he would send his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota to oversee DHS activity in the state.

Trump’s softened tone toward Walz, the deployment of Homan and the confirmation of body camera footage — already suggesting Pretti’s killing will get a more substantive review by federal officials than Good’s has received — marked at least a partial moderation of messaging from the administration. That slight change in tone comes amid mounting criticism from fellow Republicans and as Democrats prepare to make DHS funding the key issue in an upcoming spending bill.

Walz said Monday afternoon on X that he and Trump “had a productive call” and that the president agreed “to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and to talk to DHS about ensuring” that state officials be able to conduct an independent investigation.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also spoke with Trump on Monday and said that “the president agreed that this situation cannot continue.”

“I spoke with President Trump this afternoon and appreciated the conversation. I expressed how much Minneapolis has benefited from our immigrant communities and was clear that my main ask is that Operation Metro Surge needs to end,” Frey said in a statement. “The president agreed that this situation cannot continue.”

Frey said some federal agents will begin leaving the area tomorrow, which is also when he will meet with Homan.

Earlier on X, Walz linked to an essay that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in which he called the situation a “campaign of organized brutality against the people” of Minnesota.

The governor said in a late afternoon interview with Minnesota Public Radio that “my understanding is that” Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “are no longer going to be here.” MS NOW could not confirm that Bovino or Noem would be leaving the state.

Meanwhile, the fight over the federal officers’ presence continued in a court hearing Monday over requests by Minnesota officials for an order that would immediately halt Operation Metro Surge — the name for DHS’ mass immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, declined to rule in that case, filed Jan. 12 by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Menendez expressed concern about the administration’s justification for the deployment and noted more time was necessary to come to a decision.

Lawyers for the Minnesota state officials who brought the case argued that a letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi to Walz on Saturday was designed to coerce the state to change its immigration policies in exchange for the withdrawal of federal agents.

That hearing was one of two in lawsuits regarding DHS action in Minnesota on Monday. Each decision will hold major ramifications for the Trump administration’s mass immigration enforcement agenda.

The second lawsuit will give the federal government a chance to raise objections to a temporary restraining order granted by U.S. District Court Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, over the weekend. The order blocks the administration from “destroying or altering” evidence related to the fatal shooting of Pretti.

Minnesota officials said the federal investigators denied them access to the scene after Pretti was killed. The state’s criminal investigations unit, which typically leads investigations into use-of-force incidents involving law enforcement officers, was eventually blocked from investigating last month’s killing of Good .

The Justice Department asked Tostrud to dissolve the temporary retraining order in an opposition filing ahead of the hearing.

Political tensions over the killings in Minneapolis have led to calls for the impeachment of Noem. Senate Democrats have vowed to oppose a spending package that cleared the House last week because it includes funding for DHS and ICE, ratcheting up the threat of a partial government shutdown by next week.

Trump said that Homan would report directly to him after arriving in Minnesota, adding that he would manage ongoing fraud investigations in the state. Trump alleged that widespread fraud in Minnesota’s welfare system was “at least partially responsible” for the protests over Pretti’s and Good’s deaths.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Monday briefing that Trump outlined three demands for “restoring law and order” in Minnesota during his phone call with Walz.

They included forcing the state to “turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated in their prisons and jails to federal authorities,” turn over undocumented individuals arrested by local police to federal authorities, and make local law enforcement assist federal officers with “apprehending and detaining illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes, especially violent crimes.”

Fallon Gallagher contributed to this report.