Experienced federal immigration agents in Minneapolis are privately raging about the killing of nurse Alex Pretti and want out of the mission they now see as “lost,” according to a new report.
ICE and Border Patrol agents are said to have turned on the operation—and on their colleagues who blasted Pretti. The 37-year-old VA ICU nurse was shot multiple times in the back in a confrontation captured on video last Saturday.
The deadly incident followed another fatal shooting two weeks earlier by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, of unarmed 37-year-old mom Renee Nicole Good, which has caused a leadership crisis inside the Department of Homeland Security—and a crisis of confidence on the frontline.
“This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” one Border Patrol agent wrote in a private chat obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein and published on his Substack mailout. “I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost,” they added.
Anger towards federal agents grew in the wake of Good’s killing, with the Daily Beast reporting earlier this month that they feared for their own safety. Pretti’s death has made the feeling more pointed, Klippenstein reports.
Morale inside the ranks is described as collapsing. One veteran ICE agent—one of six Klippenstein reportedly spoke to for the article titled “ICE Unloads”—bemoaned that “the brand new agents are idiots.” He blamed what he saw as lowered hiring standards for the chaos in Minnesota.
A newer recruit agreed that “a lot of the guys… are honestly pretty sketchy,” describing colleagues who pass around a flask on stakeouts and show off “weird tattoos”—the kind of crew he had not expected to find in federal law enforcement.
Agents also gripe that Washington has dragged them away from immigration work and into street confrontations with protesters by labeling demonstrators as “impeding” federal functions and branding “Antifa” and other leftists as radicals and terrorists.
Threat briefings are now fixated on alleged “retaliatory” plots against ICE and Border Patrol after the deaths of Pretti and Good. “Lots of people are freaking out,” one officer told Klippenstein, saying agents are “getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators,’” and talk as if “we are fighting insurgents,” turning Minneapolis into a domestic Baghdad.
The result, officers say, is an overstretched and physically and emotionally shattered force. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) teams are “being squeezed heavily” to police protests rather than tracking down immigration targets.
This, they say, leaves “lots of guys totally exhausted out there with a lot of pressure on them” to conduct non-immigration missions, one officer said. Another warned that the FBI is now “reluctant to participate” in any Minneapolis task forces.
Behind the scenes, senior managers are said to be vanishing into back-to-back legal meetings with DHS lawyers about the fallout from both killings. On the ground, agents interpret that as a leadership vacuum.
All of which, the agents believe, caused the deaths of Good and, more so, Pretti.
One ICE agent seethed to Klippenstein that it was “yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting… ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal” method.
The agent added, “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”
A Border Patrol agent in the same private chat warned that “this individual was shot 8 to 9 times while unarmed” and complained about a “knee jerk damage control narrative that does not line up with the evidence on video.”
“We can’t always support what happens just because it’s one of us,” he said, according to Klippenstein’s reporting.
Their anger is colliding with a political crisis already engulfing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 54, who has reportedly seen her handpicked “commander at large,” Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, 55, demoted by President Donald Trump, 79.
The Daily Beast reported Monday that Trump’s immigration czar, Stephen Miller, and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, had turned against Noem. They blame the Homeland Security secretary and her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, for the decision to make Bovino and his masked “Green Machine” squads, who have been regularly filmed manhandling civilians nationwide, the public face of Trump’s deportation blitz.
Hours later, Bovino was gone, his official government social media accounts suspended, and border czar Tom Homan parachuted in to take charge on the ground.
Homan will be aided, the Daily Beast can reveal, by Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, whom Noem sidelined in favor of Bovino in what Miller saw as a “miscalculation,” but who is believed to have been sent to Minneapolis overnight for the first time.
Noem—nicknamed ICE Barbie for her love of filmed immigration raids—is heavily rumored to be on her way out, too, taking Lewandowski with her.
Outside the bubble, the public mood is turning sharply. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Monday found only 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, a record low for his presidency, with 58 percent saying ICE has “gone too far” in its activities.
Trump himself has edged away from the most incendiary rhetoric. While Miller has branded Pretti a “domestic terrorist,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she has not heard the president use that term.
Trump also posted a notably mild Truth Social statement saying Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had called him “with the request to work together,” calling it “a very good call” and saying they were “on a similar wavelength.”
On the streets, though, the federal agents Klippenstein spoke to say no amount of spin can change what happened—or what it is doing to them.
One senior ICE agent summed up his reaction to Pretti’s killing in two words: “F--k this.”
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and the White House for comment.
