‘The Minneapolis ICE killing that lastly went too far – even for Donald Trump’
“Donald Trump has always grasped one political reality – that Americans may tolerate hard-line policies when they think they benefit the country, but they recoil sharply when the government appears to gun down its own citizens in public”
Kristi Noem held a two-hour meeting with Donald Trump amid fallout from the shooting of Alex Pretti as Democrats called for her to resign(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
If there is one red line Donald Trump has always understood, it’s this: Americans can tolerate cruelty if it benefits them, but they recoil when the state guns down its own citizens in the open.
That is why the killing of Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis has sent shockwaves not just through the country, but through the White House itself. The ICE nurse was shot roughly 10 times on Saturday by Trump’s goon squad while protesting ICE’s presence in Minneapolis.
Within hours, senior administration officials rushed out a familiar narrative. Petti was a “domestic terrorist”. He was “brandishing” a gun. He was a “wanna-be assassin”. The implication was clear: whatever happened was justified. Then the video emerged. Multiple angles showed Pretti holding a camera, apparently filming the agents. His hands were visible. He never raised his weapon. He never fired a shot. He was shot in the back.
Suddenly, the story collapsed. And with it, the White House’s confidence. By Monday, the administration was scrambling. Top border official Greg Bovino, known as ICE’s Gruppenführer, was quietly pulled from Minneapolis.
The president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, conspicuously refused to repeat or defend the inflammatory claims made by her boss’s usual dog whistlers. Comments made by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the architect of the administration’s immigration crackdown, and ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, although not criticised, were not defended.
Instead, Trump’s mouthpiece Leavitt retreated to procedural language: “We will let the facts lead.” That phrase was not a commitment to transparency. It was a shield. Behind the scenes, I have been told, officials understood exactly how dangerous this moment was.
This was not an undocumented migrant at the border. Nor a shadowy “other”. Alex Pretti was an American citizen, licensed to carry a firearm under Minnesota law, killed while protesting government action. Worse still, his death followed another shooting of a US citizen, Renee Good, in the same city. Two citizens, dead, at the hands of federal immigration forces.
For an administration already teetering under the weight of a chaotic immigration crackdown, it is political napalm.
That context explains the extraordinary two-hour Oval Office meeting on Monday evening between Trump, Noem, and her top aide Corey Lewandowski. The meeting was reportedly requested by Noem herself, a sign not of strength but of peril. Also present were Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Leavitt, and communications director Steven Cheung – an unmistakable signal that damage control, not policy, was the priority.
Earlier that day, Border Patrol commander-at-large Bovino was demoted and replaced on the ground in Minnesota by Trump’s longtime border enforcer Tom Homan.
The move fuelled speculation that Noem and her rumoured boyfriend Lewandowski could be next. While Trump reportedly did not threaten their jobs outright, the symbolism is impossible to miss. When Homan shows up, it’s because someone is being blamed.
Lewandowski, in particular, has drawn scrutiny for expanding the role of Border Patrol and Bovino in domestic immigration enforcement despite his unusual status as an unpaid special government employee with limited authority.
Inside the administration, sources have described growing fury from Miller, who is less concerned with human consequences than with narrative discipline and who is reportedly livid that Bovino’s tactics have become the face of the administration’s immigration agenda.
Publicly, the White House insists everything is fine. Leavitt stresses that Noem still enjoys Trump’s “utmost confidence,” even as she awkwardly justified Homan’s deployment by noting Noem was also busy overseeing FEMA’s response to a winter storm. It was a clumsy explanation, and everyone knew it.
What the White House cannot explain away is this: under Noem, ICE’s approval rating has cratered, plunging to minus 27 points after its deployment to Minneapolis. The agency is no longer seen as tough but necessary. It is increasingly viewed as reckless, unaccountable, and dangerous.
Donald Trump did not build his political career on loyalty to bureaucrats or ideologues. He built it on instinct. And his instinct is telling him what millions of Americans already feel: whatever one thinks about immigration, ICE gunning down protesters on American streets is a step too far.
The president may never say Alex Pretti’s name. He may never publicly rebuke Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem. But the frantic reshuffling, the sudden silences, and the Oval Office marathon sessions tell their own story.
Even Trump knows this one crossed a line.
