Top White House aide Stephen Miller acknowledges possible breach of protocol before Alex Pretti’s shooting
Officials are evaluating why Customs and Border Protection in Minneapolis “did not follow” proper protocol before the deadly incident, senior White House aide Stephen Miller said Tuesday. Alex Pretti shooting — a remarkable admission of possible wrongdoing from one of the Trump administration’s most effective and hard-line operatives of immigration enforcement.
The White House “has provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used to conduct fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between arrest teams and separatists,” Miller told CNN.
“We are evaluating why the CBP team did not follow this protocol,” he said.
The statement marked perhaps one of the most notable shifts to date in the message of one of the administration’s most hawkish reporters on the Pretti shooting. Following the shooting, Miller called the Veterans Affairs Intensive Care Unit nurse a “future assassin” while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed she “committed an act of domestic terrorism.”
But the video soon showed Pretti surrounded by law enforcement. was disarmed before being fatally shot. And President Donald Trump directly contradicted Miller’s characterization on Tuesday, saying he had not heard of domestic terrorist rhetoric.
“DHS’s initial statement was based on CBP’s reports in the field,” Miller told CNN in his statement.
A few hours after making the statement Tuesday, Miller defended federal agents making immigrant arrests on social media, adding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers “work under the most adverse conditions imaginable” and are “stalked, hunted, tailgated, surveilled and brutally attacked at all hours of the day by organized violent leftists.”
According to sources close to the matter told CNN, on the day of the incident, Noem was in almost constant contact with White House officials, including Miller.
Trump was privately defending an officer who the department said pulled the trigger (DHS, since stating that two officers were fired). Sources said Noem was given guidance from multiple White House officials on how to talk about the shooting at a news conference later that evening, including suggesting (incorrectly, it would turn out) that Pretti was “brandishing” a gun. Miller’s participation in the discussions first reported by Axios.
Noem has made clear she will defend agents in the field, informing White House officials of the defiant tone she plans to take. Sources said at the time that he and the White House were aligned.
But now Trump’s messages are coming under scrutiny. trying to distance himself from those under his own administration. The president attacked on Tuesday a more conciliatory tone He appeared to have broken with both Noem and Miller over the Minnesota shooting.
CNN previously reported that some administration officials were deeply disappointed in how controversial border official Gregory Bovino and Noem handled the fallout from the deadly weekend shooting. Trump watched news broadcasts for several hours on Sunday and Monday and was personally unhappy with the direction of his administration, according to one official.
But multiple sources said that despite the negative results, neither Miller nor Noem’s jobs are at risk. Of Miller specifically, a White House official told CNN: “Trump is reluctant to talk about getting rid of someone who’s been here for a few weeks, let alone someone who’s been here for over 10 years. It’s not even on his radar.” Trump publicly said Tuesday that Noem would not resign and added that she was “doing a very good job.”
Trump said in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday that he now plans to “escalate” the situation in Minnesota because of Republicans’ growing discomfort with the attack and its aftermath. He stated that he sent border czar Tom Homan. He will replace Bovino as leader of operations on the ground.
“I don’t think it’s a retreat, it’s a small change,” Trump told Fox News during a live interview in Iowa. “Everyone in this room who has a job, you know, you make very little change. You know Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out there guy, and in some cases that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
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