Bovino’s future in doubt as White House walks back initial claims about Alex Pretti – US politics live | US news
Bovino to leave Minneapolis as White House walks back initial claims about Alex Pretti
Hello and welcome to our live coverage.
Gregory Bovino, the commander of the Border Patrol, is expected to leave Minneapolis today following the weekend killing of Alex Pretti, the second civilian to be fatally gunned down in the streets by federal immigration agents this month.
Bovino, an aggressive promoter of Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, has become the public face of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota – and a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists.
An unnamed source told Reuters that Bovino had been stripped of his specially created title of “commander at large” of the Border Patrol, but the Department of Homeland Security has pushed back on the demotion reports. “Chief Gregory Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties,” the DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, pointing to earlier comments from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, praising Bovino as a “key part of the president’s team and a great American”.
Leavitt spent Monday’s press briefing walking back initial claims made by senior administration officials about Pretti. Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, called the victim “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement”, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused him of perpetrating “the definition of domestic terrorism” – characterizations that have been undercut by video footage that showed Pretti getting shot in the back multiple times after being tackled to the ground by a group of US border patrol agents whom he had been filming, and disarmed of his gun.
Trump himself on Monday said he had a “a very good call” with Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, who he had perviously blamed for Pretti’s death. Walz said on X that he had a “productive” call with Trump, who had agreed to look at pulling federal agents out of the state and committed to talking to DHS about allowing the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation into the shootings by federal agents, which would include the one earlier this month that killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.
More to come.
Key events
Investigators reviewing body camera footage in fatal shooting of Alex Pretti
Federal investigators are reviewing body camera videos from immigration agents in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to NBC News yesterday.
Homeland security investigators have videos recorded by cameras worn by multiple agents, department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, adding that the agents involved were part of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, a specialized force. Two law enforcement officials told NBC News that unit has more body-worn cameras.
The New York Times hears the same, quoting a statement from the DHS that says:
There is body camera footage from multiple angles, which investigators are currently reviewing.
‘It’s about freedom of the press’: photographer tackled by ICE throws camera to save it
Last week, John Abernathy, an the independent photographer, was tackled to the ground by federal immigration agents during a protest in Minneapolis. He said he threw his camera in the hope of saving his photographs because the images of the protests ‘deserve to be seen’.
The Department of Homeland Security told CNN Abernathy had been arrested for obstructing pedestrian and vehicle traffic on federal property. Images of his arrest, in which he tossed his Leica camera to prevent agents from confiscation his documentation of the protest, have been circulating the Internet as a sign of the authoritarian reach of the Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“I think it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen here before. It’s a different kind of aggression somehow, against people who are using their right to speak,” Abernathy told the Guardian.
As the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, Donald Trump is scheduled today to travel to Iowa to shore up political support amid growing anxiety over weak crop prices.
As the nation’s largest producer of corn, hogs and ethanol, Iowa is critical to Trump’s rural coalition.
Lance Lillibridge, a 56-year-old corn and cattle farmer, told Reuters that though he would describe himself as a Trump supporter “for the most part”, he and other farmers have been hit hard by the trade war with China and rising costs of seeds and fertilizer.
“There’s going to have to be something because right now everything’s just terrible. I’ve never been so cash poor in my entire life,” Lillibridge said, adding that he hopes the administration will pursue another multibillion-dollar farm bailout.
The rise and fall of Gregory Bovino, US border patrol’s menacing provoker-in-chief
Robert Tait
Critics have called him a would-be Napoleon and mocked his “Nazi” aesthetic, but with Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant surge into Minneapolis, Gregory Bovino seemed to have found the political moment he had long been seeking.
Bovino, 55, a senior US border patrol official, initially rose to prominence as the figurehead of immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.
But his provocatively unapologetic utterances in Minneapolis after the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American citizen, by border patrol officers propelled him to a new level of notoriety that finally exceeded the tolerance even of the Trump administration.
With the White House under intense pressure amid a fierce backlash against Pretti’s fatal shooting, Bovino – rather than being lionised – has become an early casualty of the Trump administration’s efforts to change its posture. Officials revealed that he was to be withdrawn from his frontline role in the midwestern city. He was expected to be pulled out as Tom Homan, Trump’s “border tsar”, was sent in to oversee the operation on the ground.
The Guardian’s George Chidi, Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino report that the efforts of Donald Trump to deploy militarized immigration agents in US cities may finally be reaching a reckoning following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis.
Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis said the administration would begin to scale back the number of federal agents in Minneapolis starting on Tuesday, a day after a federal judge heard arguments about whether to end the federal officer surge in the city.
More here:
Here are some images coming out of Minneapolis overnight over the wires:
White House avoids Minneapolis tirade as signs suggest Trump backing down
David Smith
What Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, did not say on Monday was more important than what she did.
When Leavitt stepped up to the briefing room podium to address the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, she avoided the kind of victim-blaming tirade that has become de rigueur for Donald Trump’s administration.
Instead the spokeswoman called Pretti’s death a “tragedy”, said the US president wanted to let the investigation take its course, and, strikingly, refused to endorse adviser Stephen Miller’s slander of Pretti as a “would-be assassin”.
Bovino to leave Minneapolis as White House walks back initial claims about Alex Pretti
Hello and welcome to our live coverage.
Gregory Bovino, the commander of the Border Patrol, is expected to leave Minneapolis today following the weekend killing of Alex Pretti, the second civilian to be fatally gunned down in the streets by federal immigration agents this month.
Bovino, an aggressive promoter of Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, has become the public face of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota – and a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists.
An unnamed source told Reuters that Bovino had been stripped of his specially created title of “commander at large” of the Border Patrol, but the Department of Homeland Security has pushed back on the demotion reports. “Chief Gregory Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties,” the DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, pointing to earlier comments from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, praising Bovino as a “key part of the president’s team and a great American”.
Leavitt spent Monday’s press briefing walking back initial claims made by senior administration officials about Pretti. Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, called the victim “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement”, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused him of perpetrating “the definition of domestic terrorism” – characterizations that have been undercut by video footage that showed Pretti getting shot in the back multiple times after being tackled to the ground by a group of US border patrol agents whom he had been filming, and disarmed of his gun.
Trump himself on Monday said he had a “a very good call” with Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, who he had perviously blamed for Pretti’s death. Walz said on X that he had a “productive” call with Trump, who had agreed to look at pulling federal agents out of the state and committed to talking to DHS about allowing the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation into the shootings by federal agents, which would include the one earlier this month that killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.
More to come.
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