Minneapolis mayor, Klobuchar demand ICE exit state after another fatal shooting
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, along with several Minnesota senators and representatives, called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave the state on Saturday, hours after a deadly shooting in the city.
“The city of Minneapolis is filing a motion in the wake of today’s shooting to urge the judge to issue a temporary restraining order on Monday that will provide us with immediate relief and assistance to help stop this operation that has caused so much damage to the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has resulted in numerous shootings and tragic deaths,” the mayor said at a news conference. he said.
Frey said the “chaos we’re seeing” is directly caused by ICE and the Trump administration.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who accompanied Frey to the podium, said: “Our message is really loud and clear. We need ice from Minnesota.”
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“Our message is really loud and clear. We need ice from Minnesota,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who agreed with Frey. he said. (Fox News)
Klobuchar claimed that ICE “has not made us safer, because this morning’s tragic, tragic murder shows, as people viscerally saw it in that video, that they have made us less safe.”
The roughly 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents in the area “outnumber sworn police officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul by three to one, outnumbering even the 10 metropolitan police departments,” he said.
“It’s completely unbalanced, completely unbalanced,” he claimed. “And now three people have been shot, two fatally. One: Renee Good, a mother of three, and now Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident who is also a nurse.”
Pretti was shot and killed by an ICE agent during an immigration enforcement operation Saturday morning.
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“This city is under siege,” Klobuchar added, blaming it on the Trump administration.
Federal agents monitor anti-ICE agitators from a distance after they used tear gas in Minneapolis on Saturday. (Minnesota Star Tribune)
“I personally warned them that there would be more deaths and there would be more of this,” he said. “And they clearly aren’t listening. So we’re asking people across the country to talk to their Republican representatives and make it clear that this is not our America. This needs to end.”
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Frey said he requested assistance from the National Guard to assist the nearly 600 officers in the Minneapolis Police Department.
“Minneapolis police officers work tirelessly to do their daily jobs and at the same time find themselves in the middle of these chaotic situations,” he said. “Most of the protests we’ve seen have remained peaceful. Let’s keep it that way.”
Frey also addressed the president, saying, “Let’s not respond to Donald Trump’s chaos with our own version of chaos here.”
Klobuchar claimed ICE’s mission in Minnesota “goes far beyond” investigating fraud or apprehending violent criminals.
“I participated in that peaceful and powerful march yesterday, all those peaceful people, and then we woke up to this this morning,” Klobuchar lamented.
Anti-ICE agitators gather in Minneapolis. (Aaron Lavinsky/Minnesota Star Tribune)
Last summer, he said, Congressional Republicans opposed a bill that would triple ICE’s budget (which he said is now more than the FBI’s) and cut training for agents from five months to 47 days.
“We also call for a full and transparent investigation,” Klobuchar said. “We have done this before in Minnesota in coordination with local, state and federal law enforcement. And if they are not going to do that, then they need to get out of the way and allow our highly professional Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to handle the investigation into these murders.”
Frey later added in an
DHS officials say Pretti approached Border Patrol agents While he was armed with a 9mm pistol, they “violently resisted” when they tried to disarm him.
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Medical teams arriving at the scene provided emergency intervention, but it was determined that Pretti died at the scene.
Fox News’ Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.
