JD Vance has suggested that Minnesota officials invited the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in an unhinged defense of the Trump administration’s deportation operation.
The 41-year-old vice president went on a long-winded diatribe Sunday in an attempt to rationalize the shooting of Pretti, 37, by multiple masked Border Patrol agents on Saturday.
He claimed on X that local officials “created the chaos so they can have moments like yesterday, where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border.”
Vance tried to cast the federal agents as the victims by recounting a “crazy” story he claimed to have heard during his trip to Minneapolis last week.
“A couple of off duty ICE and CBP officers were going to dinner in Minneapolis,” he wrote. “They were doxed and their location revealed, and the restaurant was then mobbed. The officers were locked in the restaurant, and local police refused to respond to their pleas for help (as they’ve been directed by local authorities). Eventually, their fellow federal agents came to their aid.”
The vice president, who frequently makes false claims—such as alleging that Haitian migrants in Ohio are eating dogs—added, “This is just a taste of what’s happening in Minneapolis because state and local officials refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.”
In the wake of Pretti’s killing and the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent earlier this month, President Donald Trump and his administration have tried to shift the blame onto Minnesota officials like Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of refusing to cooperate with the federal government and of inciting anger toward federal agents.
“The solution is staring everyone in the face. I hope authorities in Minneapolis stop this madness,” Vance wrote.
Walz, in turn, has accused the Trump administration of trying to “make an example of Minnesota” by flooding the state with thousands of federal agents, and has called for their withdrawal.
Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was shot dead in the street by federal agents who pepper-sprayed him in the face and then wrestled him to the floor as he filmed an immigration operation on his phone.
Despite video footage suggesting otherwise, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino immediately claimed that Pretti ambushed law enforcement with his gun and “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that Pretti was an “assassin” who “tried to murder” federal agents in an X post, which Vance reposted.
He later wrote in an X post, “This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”
But Walz fired back while speaking to the press on Sunday, saying, “The world knows how he died. He died at the hands of ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
