MINNEAPOLIS, United States: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would \u201cde-escalate a little bit\u201d in Minneapolis after the fatal shootings of two civilians fueled a storm of criticism over his signature immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s \u201cborder czar\u201d Tom Homan met with officials in the city as the Republican attempted damage control after the killing by immigration agents of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The president also admitted that Gregory Bovino, a hard-line Border Patrol commander who is now expected to leave Minneapolis, was \u201ca pretty out-there kind of a guy\u201d whose presence may not have helped the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to de-escalate a little bit,\u201d Trump told Fox News after days of tensions following the shooting of Pretti, while adding that it was not a \u201cpullback.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said that Homan \u2014 the top US border security official, who brings a less confrontational communication style \u2014 met with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The US president told reporters that he rejected the \u201cassassin\u201d label used by a top aide to describe protester Pretti. \u201cI want a very honorable and honest investigation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yet Trump did not hold back from criticizing Pretti for carrying a licensed firearm that was taken off him before he was shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like that he had a gun, I don\u2019t like that he had two fully loaded magazines,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Pretty out there\u2019<\/p>\n
Mayor Frey said in a statement after meeting Homan that he discussed the \u201cserious negative impacts this operation has had on Minneapolis,\u201d and that the city \u201cwill not enforce federal immigration laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Walz said he called for \u201cimpartial investigations\u201d into shootings by federal agents in the city as well as a \u201csignificant reduction\u201d in federal forces in the state.<\/p>\n
Pretti\u2019s death has sparked outrage nationwide.<\/p>\n
Democratic former president Joe Biden on Tuesday said the situation \u201cbetrays our most basic values as Americans.\u201d Ex-presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have also spoken out.<\/p>\n
Pretti, shot multiple times after being knocked to the ground, was the second US citizen killed by immigration officers in Minneapolis this month, turning the city into ground zero of national tensions over Trump\u2019s mass deportation policies.<\/p>\n
Protester Renee Good, a mother of three, was shot by an agent at point blank range in her car on January 7.<\/p>\n
The killings capped months of escalating violence in which masked, unidentified, and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents have grabbed people suspected of violating immigration laws off the streets.<\/p>\n
Despite multiple videos showing that Pretti posed no threat, top officials initially claimed he had been intending to kill federal agents.<\/p>\n
Trump backed his under-fire Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, who described Pretti as a \u201cdomestic terrorist,\u201d saying she would not step down and was doing a \u201cvery good job.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he was less supportive of Bovino, a Border Patrol official famed for reveling in aggressive, televised immigration crackdowns who had also played up the narrative that Pretti had posed a threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cBovino\u2019s very good, but he\u2019s a pretty out there kind of a guy. And in some cases, that\u2019s good, maybe it wasn\u2019t good here,\u201d Trump told Fox.<\/p>\n
\u2018Sickened\u2019<\/p>\n
Concern over the violence and the attempt to blame Pretti for his death quickly spread to Washington.<\/p>\n
Republican Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday that agents involved in the shooting should be put on administrative leave, later adding that the heads of ICE, Border Patrol and Citizenship and Immigration Services would testify before the Congress next month.<\/p>\n
Centrist Democratic Senator John Fetterman said \u201cgrossly incompetent\u201d Noem should be fired.<\/p>\n
The turmoil could even result in a fresh US government shutdown, with Democrats threatening to block approval of routine spending bills up for votes in the Senate later this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole community is just sickened by all this,\u201d said 68-year-old retiree Stephen McLaughlin in Minneapolis. \u201cThe aim of the government is to terrorize citizens, it\u2019s really frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MINNEAPOLIS, United States: US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would \u201cde-escalate a little bit\u201d in Minneapolis after the fatal shootings of two civilians fueled a storm of criticism over his signature immigration crackdown. Trump\u2019s \u201cborder czar\u201d Tom Homan met with officials in the city as the Republican attempted damage control after the killing by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92883,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92863\/revisions\/92883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}