Supporters of President Donald Trump are expressing alarm and frustration after two deadly shootings linked to his immigration crackdown.
Speaking to MS Now presenter Vaughan Hilyard outside of Trump’s rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, voters Marsha and Michael said they were having second thoughts about the president.
It comes after Trump deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis as part of his “worst of the worst” immigration crackdown.
Since then, two U.S. citizens have been killed by federal immigration agents.
One of them was 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, who was thrown to the ground and shot multiple times by federal immigration agents Saturday after he tried to help a woman they’d just shoved down.
His death came just weeks after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother Renee Good by an ICE agent just a few miles away.
Asked whether the large‑scale enforcement operations matched her expectations, Marsha, a longtime Trump supporter, shook her head. “Not like they’re doing. Not like this. Not like this. This is horrible. Just horrible. I’m sick to my stomach.”
Michael expressed similar discomfort. When asked if what he had seen made him uneasy, he replied simply, “Yeah. Yeah.” Then he elaborated: “I mean, I think anytime someone gets shot in the street, you should be uncomfortable and ask how we got to that point and what we can do to not get to that point again. It’s happened twice, so something clearly isn’t working.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
In the fatal shootings of both Good and Pretti, federal officials were widely criticized for quickly casting the victims as violent threats to law enforcement—claims that have since been challenged by video and witness accounts. In Good’s case, authorities initially suggested she attempted to “run over” agents with her vehicle before she was fatally shot. Bystander footage and subsequent reporting contradicted that narrative.
Similarly, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump officials claimed Pretti had approached agents with a gun and intended to harm them, labeling him a “domestic terrorist.”
But multiple videos reviewed by news organizations show Pretti holding only a cellphone and trying to help another person before being tackled by agents, with his legally carried handgun still holstered until an agent removed it just before the shots were fired.
Noem has faced mounting calls to step down over the administration’s response to the shootings, and nearly 150 lawmakers have backed an effort to impeach her.
Several Republican leaders have also publicly broken with Trump and Noem after the latest shooting. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott denounced the fatal shootings by federal agents as “murder,” saying they reflected either a “complete failure of coordination, acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership” or “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, while Sen. Bill Cassidy called the shooting of Pretti “incredibly disturbing” and urged an independent investigation.
Meanwhile, polls show that Trump has hit his lowest approval rating yet on immigration. A Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted from Friday through Sunday, showed only 39 percent of Americans approving of his handling of the issue. The result marks a sharp decline from earlier this year, when approval reached 50 percent in both February and March.
Meanwhile, a new survey by YouGov and The Economist suggests growing momentum behind calls to dismantle ICE. Roughly 46 percent of respondents backed abolishing the agency, outpacing the 41 percent who were opposed. That represents a modest change from earlier in the month, when several polls showed the country almost evenly divided on the issue.
