Border patrol

Jacob Sullum | 1.25.2026 6:00 PM

Hours after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis protester Renee Good on January 7, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Good was engaged in "domestic terrorism" because she had "weaponize[d] her vehicle" and "attempted to run a law enforcement officer over." Noem averred that Good therefore posed a potentially deadly threat to Ross, "the other officers around him," and the general public, which she said justified Ross' "defensive shots."

After U.S. Border Patrol agents fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti on Saturday, Noem likewise portrayed that use of deadly force as obviously justified. "This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him, and [had] dozens of rounds of ammunition" in two magazines, she said. Pretti, Noem claimed, was "wishing to inflict harm on these officers" by "brandishing [a gun] like that and impeding their work that they were doing." Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino drew a similar picture, saying "this looks like a situation where the individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."

In both cases, video evidence immediately contradicted what Noem and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials had said. The footage suggested that Good was not deliberately trying to run Ross down and that Pretti—an ICU nurse who, like Good, was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record—neither assaulted Border Patrol agents nor threatened them with his handgun, which he was licensed to carry. And in both cases, DHS promised a thorough internal investigation, the outcome of which Noem had already prejudged.

These misleading DHS claims are part of a persistent pattern. "In case after case" across the country, Reason's C.J. Ciaramella noted in October, DHS has shown "a willingness to put false information out to the public and never correct it." Those self-justifying statements suggest that DHS cannot be trusted to tell the truth about its employees' use of force, let alone to ascertain whether it was justified based on a careful and dispassionate consideration of the circumstances.

Bovino illustrated the department's habitual obfuscation and slipperiness during an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday. Although Noem asserted that Pretti was "brandishing" his pistol, Bash noted, "multiple angles of this incident show him holding up a cell phone and recording it, not a gun." Did Pretti "at any point pull out his weapon?" she asked.

Bovino did not want to answer that question, and the reason seems clear. The........

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