As the White House tried to “de-escalate” tensions in Minneapolis on Wednesday, a man sprayed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota with an unknown liquid during a town hall meeting where she called for curbs on the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
The White House is also evaluating whether the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who shot nurse Alex Pretti failed to follow “clear guidelines” to “create a physical barrier between the SWAT teams and the disruptors,” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said.
On Wednesday at the town hall, Omar had just spoken about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and demanded that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem “resign or face impeachment” when a man from the front row jumped up, made a comment and sprayed the lawmaker as security jumped up to grab him.
Omar raised a fist and stepped toward the attacker before returning to the podium to say, “This is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand: We are strong in Minnesota. And we will remain resilient despite everything they throw at us.”
Omar is a frequent target of President Donald Trump — who continues to defend Noem despite her oversight of federal immigration agents who fatally shot two U.S. citizens this month, saying Noem would not resign and was doing “a very good job.”
But after days of protests following the death of 37-year-old Pretti, Trump told Fox News “we’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” while adding it was not a “withdrawal.”
Trump also admitted that Gregory Bovino, a hardline Border Patrol commander now expected to leave Minneapolis, was “quite an outlier” whose presence may not have helped the situation, and sent U.S. Border Security Officer Tom Homan to meet with officials in the city.
Trump told reporters he has rejected the “hit man” label used by a top aide to describe the 37-year-old nurse, adding that he wants “a very honorable and fair investigation.”
But he criticized Pretti for carrying the approved firearm that was taken from him before he was shot.
“I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines,” the president said.
Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Saturday. Source: MONKEY / AP
‘Beautiful out there’
After meeting with Homan on Wednesday, Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement that they discussed the “serious negative impact this operation has had on Minneapolis,” and that the city “will not enforce federal immigration laws.”
Just a few weeks later Federal immigration agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in MinneapolisPretti’s death sparked national outrage and added to a litany of complaints about abusive tactics.
Good, a mother of three, was shot by an officer at point-blank range in her car on January 7.
The killings capped months of escalating violence in which masked, unidentified and heavily armed ICE and Border Patrol agents have grabbed people off the streets they accuse of violations.
Despite multiple videos proving Pretti posed no threat, Bovino and Noem initially claimed Pretti planned to kill federal agents and called him a “domestic terrorist.”
Mention ‘grossly incompetent’
Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that officers involved in the shooting should be placed on administrative leave, later adding that immigration enforcement leaders would testify before Congress next month.
Centrist Democratic Sen. John Fetterman said the “highly incompetent” Noem should be fired.
The unrest could even result in another US government shutdown, with Democrats calling for broad reforms of federal immigration operations at the DHS and threatening to block approval of its funding as part of spending bills set to be put to a vote in the Senate later this week.
The judiciary also reversed Trump’s actions in Minneapolis on Wednesday, when a US judge blocked the deportation of a five-year-old boy and his father, who were detained last week in another incident that went viral.
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