Two federal agents reportedly identified in fatal shooting of Alex Pretti | US immigration
Government documents identify the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP). ProPublica.
According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the shootout that resulted in Pretti’s death last weekend. The conflict sparked widespread demonstrations and renewed demands for criminal investigations into federal immigration enforcement actions. In the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing, the Trump administration repeatedly made false claims about the shooting.
At the time of the incident, both agents were participating in Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigration enforcement initiative that launched in December. The operation deployed multiple armed, masked agents in Minneapolis as part of a citywide sweep.
CBP, the agency that employed both men, has refused to publicly release the names of the agents involved and has released little additional information about the shooting. The lack of transparency has come under increased scrutiny, especially since the incident occurred just days after another immigration officer shot and killed a different protester, Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis.
Pretti’s death and the secrecy surrounding the agents’ identities come at a time of growing national debate over Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. Enforcement actions in cities across the country have included violent encounters involving both immigrants and U.S. citizens, arguably carried out by agents allowed to conceal their identities with masks.
Lawmakers from both parties have called for a full and transparent investigation into the killing of Pretti, who was 37 and worked as an intensive care unit nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.
Earlier this week, CBP sent a notice to elected members of Congress confirming that two agents fired Glock pistols during the encounter that led to Pretti’s death, but their names were not included in the notice. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, said through a spokesman that agents were placed on leave following the attack.
After days of protests and pressure from lawmakers, the justice department announced Friday that its civil rights division had opened an investigation.
Records reportedly show Ochoa joined CBP as a border patrol agent in 2018, while Gutierrez began working for the agency in 2014. Gutierrez works in CBP’s field operations office and is part of a special response team that performs high-risk missions similar to those conducted by police Swat units. Both men are from south Texas.
