The Border Patrol agents who subdued, punched, and fatally shot Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti have been placed on administrative leave, according to multiple reports.
The paid leave will only last three days, an anonymous official told MS NOW. An unnamed Homeland Security official told The New York Times the placement was “standard protocol.”
MS Now reported that those involved in the brutal killing will return to “desk duty” after three days, not field work. The report added that the two agents who opened fire at Pretti received “mental health support” after killing the 37-year-old in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
The names of the masked agents involved have not been released by DHS, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The Trump administration’s decision to place the agents on less than a workweek’s worth of leave has been slammed as the “bare minimum.”
“You mean after a week and heavy political pressure and public outrage, the Trump admin is going to do the absolute bare minimum that every law enforcement organization would do in an officer-involved shooting?” wrote Ron Filipkowski, editor of the anti-Trump news site Meidas Touch.
President Donald Trump claimed earlier this month, against video evidence, that Renee Nicole Good ran over the ICE agent who killed her and that the officer was lucky to be alive.
Facing intense backlash and bleeding support from Hispanic voters, Trump has shied away from parroting the DHS version of events in Pretti’s killing.
The president refused to back up Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that Pretti intended to massacre federal agents, and has demoted the Border Patrol commander, Greg Bovino, who was leading the agency’s operation in Minnesota.
However, those changes are not enough for many of his critics. Both Democrats and Republicans, including Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, have called for the firing of Noem outright for overseeing an operation that killed two Americans in a three-week span.
A DHS official told the Times that the agents involved in the Pretti shooting were immediately placed on leave. That clashes with Bovino’s previous claim that they were still “working.”
Bovino is being returned to the border city of El Centro, California, to finish out his career before retiring, it was announced Monday.
Noem’s odds of being fired reached an all-time high on prediction markets like Kalshi on Wednesday, despite the president giving the embattled secretary a subtle vote of confidence the night before, saying, “I think she’s doing a very good job.”
Asked by a reporter if Noem would step down, Trump responded, “No.”
