Immigration

Peter Suderman | 1.29.2026 12:38 PM

When news broke last weekend that federal immigration agents had shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was quick to go on the offensive. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who was killed, a DHS post on X initially claimed, "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that Pretti had "brandished" a gun at officers. Pretti was indeed carrying a gun, for which he was legally permitted. But multiple videos of the incident clearly show that he had been disarmed before he was shot, and a DHS review released days later notably did not include the claim that he brandished his weapon. 

As with the killing of Renee Good by federal immigration officers days earlier, senior Trump administration officials rushed to prejudge the incident before the facts could possibly be known by painting the dead citizen as an agitator and aggressor. Rather than acting cautiously, Noem and her agency simply lied. And in doing so, they had smeared a man killed by his own government. 

Those lies came directly from senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, according to Axios. It's not hard to believe that report. Miller is, by most accounts, the mind behind President Donald Trump's immigration policy, including its most visible and aggressive aspects—the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles last year, the attempts to create a chaotic scene in Portland, Oregon, and the surge of masked federal agents into Minneapolis that resulted in the killing of Pretti and Good.

On social media, Miller himself asserted that Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" and an "assassin." And in the days afterward, Miller continued with the militant rhetoric. He often paints immigration as an invasion with........

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