CBP Agent Guns Down Minneapolis Nurse: Video Analysis

Meghnad Bose, Rana Roudi, and Ryan Grim break down video obtained by Drop Site showing CBP’s killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti on Saturday.

by Meghnad Bose, Rana Roudi, and Ryan Grim

On Saturday, U.S. federal agents killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, shooting him multiple times at point blank range while pinned down prone on the ground and surrounded by officers along Nicollet Avenue. The Saturday killing—committed by a Customs and Border Protection agent—is the third shooting by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP in as many weeks, and comes just one day after tens of thousands of Minneapolis residents took to the streets in subzero temperatures to protest the federal raids in Minnesota.

Close-up video footage, obtained by Drop Site, shows one agent push a person to the ground and then deploy a chemical irritant twice on the 37-year-old Pretti, who had gone to help the person pushed. Around eight agents then swarm and wrestle him to the ground. One of the officers then visibly unholstered his gun and fired multiple close-range gunshots at Pretti, a Minnesota resident who was reportedly on the scene as an observer. There are ten gunshots heard in all—at least five of them were fired at Pretti from a distance, while the person holding the camera shouts, “What the fuck did you just do?”

Video footage obtained by Drop Site with slow-motion video analysis of the January 24th killing of Alex Pretti by a CBP agent.

Another video showing a different angle of the killing also shows federal agents manhandling Pretti once he’s face down on the ground, with one officer appearing to strike him three times just before the gun shots ring out. The videos show one officer approaching Pretti as he’s pinned to the ground, reaching over his body and recovering a gun from his back. After his gun is removed and as the officer walks away with it, there are multiple gunshots fired at Pretti by another agent

More video footage of the shooting from a separate angle.

The two video angles placed side-by-side.

Protests against the presence of federal agents in the Twin Cities area have escalated since the January 7 killing of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, while another incident followed a week later when an ICE officer shot a Venezuelan man in the leg. Saturday’s killing of Pretti was followed by more protests, with video showing federal officers tear-gassing protesters and observers on the scene.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both CBP and ICE, alleged the man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and released a photo of the purported firearm, which appears to be a Sig Sauer Emperor Scorpion. No video has surfaced showing Pretti approaching federal agents with a brandished gun. A statement from President Donald Trump posted from the White House’s official X account said, “This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go…LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!” Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller alleged that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist [who] tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” despite the fact that Pretti was being held down by four federal agents when he was shot.

Pretti worked as an intensive care unit nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, and he was a union member with The American Federation of Government Employees.

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