Internal review contradicts Trump administration on Alex Pretti shooting
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Wednesday, January 28th, 2026. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ximena Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy.
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
And we are recording this at 1152 a.m. Immediately after Alex Preddy was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis, top government officials labeled him a domestic terrorist on a mission to kill law enforcement. That was immediately contradicted by bystander video and court testimony. Now, Customs and Border Protection has done its own initial internal review, and its description matches the videos seen across social media, but bears little resemblance to what had been the official line. Ximena, you got your hands on this review. Tell us more about it and what it said happened.
So this was a review that had to be delivered to congressional committees because DHS labeled Pretty's death a death in custody. And so that's why we got this review so quickly. You know, essentially, it was conducted by DHS's own employee conduct review teams. And what it says is that Border Patrol officers were actually at first confronted by two women who were blowing their whistles like we've seen before. Other observers do. You know, the whistles are assigned to other people in the neighborhoods that immigration officers and agents are there. And essentially, officers ordered the two women to move out of the roadway. We see this matchup with videos of, you know, some of the agents approaching the women and kind of shoving them out of the road and into the sidewalk.
That is then when the officers encountered Alex Preddy, who is the 37-year-old U.S. citizen that was killed.
And we are lucky to have you here today on this pod because on Saturday, you were there when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a briefing and addressed the shooting. Just how different is what's in this review from what you heard from the Homeland Security Secretary over the weekend? Right.
So Noem quickly organized a press conference at the FEMA headquarters, but most of the time was spent talking about this shooting. Here's what she told us.
This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him, and multiple, dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers coming, brandishing like that, and impeding their work that they were doing.
Now, both Nome and the CBP report say that officers were out initially doing a specific arrest. Now, I asked Nome if that's what they were doing, if they had this target, then why did they deviate their attention off target to the civilians? And here's what she told me.
This individual impeded the law enforcement officers and attacked them. State the facts as they unfolded on the street today. We were doing a targeted operation against an illegal criminal, and this individual came with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition and attacked them.
Now, this was contradicted in the agency's own initial review.
Right. There is no brandishing mentioned in that review. Right.
And remember that the report also says that the officers were originally dealing with these two other women. And it's not until after they shove those women out of the way that they even notice Preti. And then that quickly escalates.
What happened during the Alex Pretti shooting incident?
Then there's a struggle to detain Preti during that struggle. Agents shout that Preddy has a gun. And then approximately five seconds later, the first agent discharges his gun. Another agent also fires shots. So this report seems to say that agents didn't even know he had a gun nor his intent when they first came across him.
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