The hosts of MS NOW’s Morning Joe sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, accusing the agency of spreading false or misleading claims about the deaths of Americans killed in Minneapolis.
Joe Scarborough accused DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other senior federal officials of “making s--t up” in their public accounts of how two Americans were killed during a federal immigration operation in Minneapolis.
Scarborough said the situation was truly “Orwellian,” arguing that viewers were watching video of Americans “being beaten or, in two cases, gunned down in the streets” while DHS officials were “just making s--t up about dead Americans gunned down in the street—dead Americans gunned down in the street!”
Scarborough cited the killing of Renee Good, recalling what he described as her final words—“I’m not mad at you”—before she was shot at close range, and accused federal officials of immediately spreading false claims afterward. “Without knowing any of the facts,” he said, Noem “lies through her teeth.” He said the same pattern repeated itself in the death of Alex Pretti, calling it “the same exact thing—DHS lying through their teeth.”
According to Scarborough, the repeated falsehoods have become a breaking point even for some Republicans. He suggested that it was not only the killings themselves, but “all the lies that Kristi Noem has been telling over and over and over again” that ultimately led members of the party to say, “No, no, what she’s saying here is a lie… They’re lying to the American people.”
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS for comment.
It comes after Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by federal immigration agents during a confrontation in Minneapolis on Saturday as he attempted to assist a woman amid a protest against a heightened ICE crackdown.
Body-camera and bystander video shared online show agents spraying Pretti with a chemical irritant and wrestling him to the ground before several shots were fired.
Pretti’s death occurred just over two weeks after another Minneapolis resident, Renee Good, was fatally shot by an ICE officer—an earlier incident that had already ignited protests and drawn intense scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement tactics.
Federal and White House officials initially defended the fatal shooting of Good by an ICE agent by asserting she had tried to “run over” officers with her vehicle—a characterization Noem echoed, saying Good “weaponized her vehicle” against agents.
However, multiple videos and eyewitness accounts show the SUV’s wheels turned away from officers and do not clearly support the claim that she aggressively sought to strike them, prompting public and political pushback on that narrative.
Similarly, Noem and other DHS officials described Pretti as a threat who approached agents with a firearm, but widely shared footage shows him holding only a cellphone before he was subdued and shot, with no clear evidence that he pointed or fired a weapon at officers.
Noem also repeatedly referred to him as a “domestic terrorist.”
Fox News reported that some DHS officials are privately alarmed by the Trump administration’s handling of the case, saying they are angered by efforts to label Pretti a “terrorist” and portray him as intent on attacking immigration agents, even as publicly released video and witness accounts undermine that claim.
Meanwhile, several Republican leaders have publicly broken with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security over the shooting of Pretti.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott called the killing of protesters by federal agents “murder,” saying the operations reflect either a “complete failure of coordination, acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership” or, at worst, “a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the deaths raise “serious questions” about immigration enforcement practices. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana described the shooting of Pretti as “incredibly disturbing” and called for a thorough, independent investigation into the incident.
Pretti’s family voiced deep outrage over the federal account of his death, insisting that officials misrepresented what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting. In a statement, his parents rejected suggestions that he posed any danger, pointing to video evidence showing he was trying to assist a bystander when agents opened fire.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,” the family said, emphasizing that Pretti held only his phone and was attempting to protect a woman when he was attacked. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
