The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti

Within minutes of Alex Pretti being shot and killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Saturday, the Trump administration, backed by right-wing influencers, launched a smear campaign against the victim, labeling him a “terrorist” and a “lunatic.”

Pretti, 37, was killed during a confrontation with multiple federal immigration agents. Pretti was an American citizen and a registered nurse who worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a colleague who spoke to the Guardian. Video from a bystander shows Pretti was attempting to help a woman who had been pepper sprayed by an immigration agent when officers tackled him.

Pretti’s killing comes 17 days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three. Good was also 37 at the time of her death.

Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said during a press conference on Saturday that information about what had led up to Pretti’s fatal confrontation was limited, but at a separate press conference, Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander overseeing federal operations in Minneapolis, claimed to have a full assessment of what had taken place.

Bovino claimed Pretti had approached officers with a 9mm handgun, resisted disarmament, and was shot in what he described as a clear act of self-defense. He claimed the man had two loaded magazines and lacked identification, and alleged that Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement,” while the Border Patrol agent who killed Petri, he said, had extensive training.

The Department of Homeland Security reiterated Bovino’s claims in a post on X that has been viewed over 17 million times at the time of publication, and the narrative was carried unquestioningly by right-wing outlets, like the Post Millenial, which published a story headlined: “Armed agitator Alex Pretti appeared to want ‘maximum damage’ and to ‘massacre’ law enforcement when shot by BP in Minnesota.”

Key portions of these claims are contradicted by publicly available evidence.

Multiple videos shared on social media in the moments after the shooting show no indication that Pretti’s gun was visible when he was approached by the officers. Analyses by The New York Times and Bellingcat found that Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, when the federal officers approached him and forced him to the ground.

On Truth Social, President Donald Trump weighed in to blame Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric,” Trump wrote in a post that included an image of a gun DHS claimed Pretti was carrying at the time he was killed.

Vice President JD Vance backed up Trump’s criticism of local leadership, sharing a screenshot of the president’s Truth Social post and writing on X: “When I visited Minnesota, what the ICE agents wanted more than anything was to work with local law enforcement so that situations on the ground didn’t get out of hand. The local leadership in Minnesota has so far refused to answer those requests.”

Also posting on X, defense secretary Pete Hegseth added to the criticism of Frey and Walz, as well as denigrating the victim: “Shame on the leadership of Minnesota — and the lunatics in the street. ICE > MN.”

Walz, in a press conference, referred to the federal narrative as “nonsense.”

“Minnesota’s justice system will have the last word” on Pretti’s killing, Walz said, adding, “the federal government cannot be trusted with this investigation.”