Killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti In Minneapolis are Undermining Our Rule of Law

The Trump Administration’s reactions to the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are undermining our rule of law. The Task Force urgently calls for the Administration to cooperate, as is customary, with the State of Minnesota in conducting a full and fair joint federal/state criminal investigation of the killings by federal agents in Minnesota and to respect the dignity and the First and Fourth Amendment rights of all Minnesota residents.

In December 2025, thousands of federal immigration agents launched a massive deportation campaign in the city of Minneapolis that has expanded to other parts of Minnesota. Local residents quickly mobilized to protest the activities in their neighborhoods, including the disappearance of some of their neighbors. The agents responded with aggressive tactics and, on January 7, 2026, an agent fired three gunshots at point-blank range into a car and killed the driver, Renee Good. The shooting may not have been justified and may have violated federal and state criminal statutes. See e.g., The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa segment titled, The critical flash points in the Minnesota case with Harry Litman (January 14, 2026), and Julia Gegenheimer, Just Security, Emerging Evidence Provides Basis for Opening Investigation of ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good (January 22, 2026). Thus, it was encouraging that the initial law enforcement response to the killing was that as is customary, a joint state and federal criminal investigation would be conducted.

The Administration quickly scuttled the joint investigation and instead publicly blamed the victim. After seeing a video of the shooting, the President declared that the federal immigration agent had been “run over.” The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, contended that the victim had “weaponized her vehicle” and was a “domestic terrorist.” It should be noted the Administration has been using a domestic terrorism characterization of dissenters from Administration policies to justify silencing, arresting or even injuring such dissenters. Respected observers, however, have questioned the accuracy of these claims by the President and Noem. See e.g., Prof. Rangappa, supra, and Rachel Levinson-Waldman in a January 16, 2025 Brennan Center for Justice analysis.

After the Administration cancelled the joint criminal investigation of Good’s shooting, DHS Secretary Noem asserted that Minnesota state authorities have “no jurisdiction” over the matter. Vice President Vance added that the shooter has “absolute immunity” from prosecution. And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.” In fact, the Administration did start an investigation, but of the victim and her surviving spouse. Then the Department of Justice expanded its investigation, issuing criminal subpoenas to the Governor of Minnesota, the Mayor of Minneapolis, the Mayor of St. Paul, and other state and local officials on potential charges of conspiring to impede federal law enforcement.

The Administration appears to be following the same pattern with respect to the killing by federal immigration agents on Saturday, January 24, 2026, of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at whom the agents fired at least ten shots while he was being held down by several agents on the streets of Minneapolis. The immediate Administration reaction, again prior to any investigation, was to blame the victim and characterize him as a domestic terrorist, even though respected media organizations challenged those claims. See e.g., NPR Staff, Watch: Videos refute DHS account of fatal shooting in Minneapolis (January 25, 2026) and  Devon Lum and Haley Willis, Videos Show Moments in Which Agents Killed a Man in Minneapolis (NYT January 24, 2026). In response to a complaint filed the day of the shooting by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension asserting that federal agents blocked its personnel from accessing the scene of the shooting and allowed the perimeter around the shooting site to collapse which may have spoiled evidence, a federal judge issued that same day a temporary restraining order barring the Administration from destroying or altering evidence related to Pretti’s fatal shooting.

The Administration’s key legal assertions are incorrect. These killings took place in the State of Minnesota. They may constitute homicides under Minnesota state law. Therefore, Minnesota state authorities unquestionably have jurisdiction to investigate whether any state criminal law was violated. Indeed, when a federal agent is accused of violating state criminal law, the U.S. Supreme Court has long permitted state criminal prosecutions to proceed when the state alleges that the federal agent is not entitled to sovereign immunity because they acted beyond the scope of their duties or conducted themselves in an egregious or unwarranted manner. For example, in U.S. ex.rel. Drury v. Lewis, 200 U.S. 1 (1906), two U.S. soldiers shot and killed a man who had been accused of stealing federal property. The shooting took place on state land, and state authorities sought to prosecute the soldiers for murder. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the prosecution to proceed, because if certain facts were established “it could not reasonably be claimed that the fatal shot was fired in the performance of a duty imposed by the Federal law.” Id., at 8. Similarly, in Idaho v. Horiuchi, 253 F.3d 359 (9th Cir. 2001) the Ninth Circuit allowed the prosecution to proceed of an FBI sniper who shot and killed an unarmed woman in Idaho because if certain facts were established it could be concluded that “the agent act[ed] in an objectively unreasonable manner.” Id., at 371.

It is customary to conduct joint state/federal investigations in such cases, as was initially announced in the case of Renee Good. Instead, by denying the state access to most of the relevant evidence and immediately blaming the victims for their own deaths, the Administration appears to be avoiding a thorough, unbiased investigation of these killings and pre-determining the outcome of its own DHS administrative investigations. Such internal investigations, unlike criminal investigations, are intended to determine whether the involved officer’s actions complied with agency policy, procedures, rules, and training. See e.g., International Association of Chiefs of Police. 2016. Officer-Involved Shootings: A Guide for Law Enforcement Leaders. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at 16. The Administration’s actions are prompting even wider protests which the Administration is answering by sending another 1,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis and threatening both to invoke the Insurrection Act and to deploy federal troops to the scene.

All Americans have a fundamental right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution to engage in peaceful protests of government actions and to be free of any government violence when they do so. Indeed, Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we honored this month, again and again organized and led such protests. When a government agent kills a protester, the proper administration of justice requires that the government conduct a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation to determine if the agent should be criminally charged. The Administration appears to have ignored these principles.

Accordingly, the Rule of Law Task Force of the New York County Lawyers Association calls on the President and his Administration to take three steps:

• Cooperate fully with the Minnesota state investigation of the killings of Renee Good and of Alex Pretti to determine whether their respective killers should be charged criminally under Minnesota law and, if charges are brought, assist in the state prosecution.

• Comply with the terms of the January 16, 2026 court order issued by federal District Judge Katherine Menendez which requires federal immigration agents to respect the public’s Constitutional right to engage in “peaceful and unobstructive protest” of ICE activities. While that order has been temporarily stayed by the Eighth Circuit, such compliance by all federal immigration agents remains a minimum requirement to comply with the First Amendment of our Constitution.

• Conform the operations of all federal agents wherever deployed to the Constitutional requirement that individuals may not be stopped, detained, or arrested without reasonable cause. In particular, federal immigration officials may not constitutionally base their actions solely on the race, ethnicity, or national origin of their targets, as ICE agents evidently have done again and again in both Minneapolis and in Maine. Nor may federal immigration officials rely only on an administrative warrant to forcibly enter an individual’s residence and arrest the individual.

We believe that these three actions, combined with a reduction in the number of ICE agents in Minneapolis, the cessation of similar ICE surges, such as the one recently launched in Maine that DHS has called “Operation Catch of the Day,” and a tempering of the rhetoric of senior Administration officials will help to protect our precious Constitutional rights, liberties, and freedoms, and significantly reduce the threat of violence to Americans throughout our country, as well as to federal agents seeking lawfully to enforce our immigration laws.

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This statement has been issued by the Rule of Law Task Force and approved by NYCLA’s President.  It has not been reviewed by NYCLA’s full Board of Directors and does not necessarily represent its views.