White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller admitted on Tuesday that Customs and Border Protection agents "may not have been following" the proper protocol when they shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last weekend.
He said his initial remarks about Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, when he called him an "assassin" and a "domestic terrorist," were based on "reports from CBP on the ground."
"The White House provided clear guidance to [the Department of Homeland Security] that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors," Miller told The New York Post in a statement, the paper reported Wednesday.
"We are evaluating why the [Customs and Border Protection] team may not have been following that protocol," he added.
Miller's comments come after bipartisan outcry over Pretti's death, which was the second federal agent-involved killing of an anti-ICE protester in the past 17 days, following the shooting death of Renee Good.
According to an initial Department of Homeland Security review, Pretti, who had a handgun in his possession, and an unidentified woman refused to move out of the street after CBP officers gave them "several verbal requests."
Pretti, according to several videos from the scene, attempted to assist the woman, and a struggle ensued between him and CBP officers when they tried to take him into custody.
The DHS review said that Pretti "resisted" and that a Border Patrol agent began shouting, "He's got a gun!"
Seconds later, an agent and an officer fired at Pretti, with at least 10 shots in total being fired.
The report does not say that Pretti tried to reach for the gun, even after Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino alleged Pretti had intended to "massacre law enforcement" and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that the CBP agents had fired defensively when Pretti approached them with a gun.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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