Nine months after federal immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, his parents stepped before cameras on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, and delivered a blunt message to the United States Department of Justice: stop shielding the people who killed their son, and hand over the evidence. Michael and Susan Pretti, speaking publicly for the first time since their son's death on January 24, said months of unanswered questions had compounded a grief that has not eased, and they accused federal officials of closing ranks around the agents involved rather than pursuing a transparent account of what happened on a Minneapolis street during a federal immigration enforcement surge.
The news conference, held in Minneapolis with the family's attorney, Steven L. Schleicher, reframed a case that has become one of the most contested episodes of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was killed while taking part in protests against the enforcement operation known as Operation Metro Surge, shortly after immigration agents had fatally shot another United States citizen, Renee Good, in the same city. The Justice Department says its investigation is proceeding at a normal pace and that family communications ordinarily come later in a case. The Pretti family and Minnesota prosecutors say that explanation does not account for evidence they say is still being withheld from state investigators.
At the Minneapolis news conference, Michael Pretti said the family's experience with the Justice Department had left them doubting whether their son would ever receive justice. "Our experience with the Department of Justice has left us wondering how Alex will ever get justice," he said, according to Reuters. "Do your job and stop shielding Alex's killers," he demanded. It was the family's first public statement since Pretti died, and the father framed the demand in the simplest possible terms: an investigation, conducted openly, and accountability for whoever was responsible.
Susan Pretti spoke about the year her family has endured since January. "It has been a miserable year for our family," she said. "All we want is justice for Alex [and] that the federal government treat us with the dignity and respect that our son deserves." She also accused federal officials of using television appearances to attack her son's reputation after his death, an effort she described as shameful. The parents said officials had misled them, ignored their requests for information, and protected the agents involved, leaving them to learn about the investigation largely from news reports and court filings rather than from the department itself.
Their attorney, Steven L. Schleicher, said the government had failed to provide even basic information about the shooting. In a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche in July, Schleicher argued that the refusal to communicate with the family violated the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act, which gives victims' families certain rights to information and participation in federal proceedings. "It is impossible to convey how the government's refusal to engage in transparent communication with the Pretti family has compounded their heartbreak," he wrote. At the news conference, he pressed a question that has become central to the dispute: "Why would it take nine months for the federal government to share the evidence that it has with other law enforcement agencies?"
The Justice Department responded in a statement to Reuters, defending both the pace of the investigation and its approach to the family. "Communications with family members, if any, come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing," the department said. "Those communications do not typically occur during an investigation." The department added, in a further statement, that "the timing is consistent with how these types of investigations proceed." The Minnesota United States Attorney's Office declined to comment on the family's news conference, according to reporting of the event.
Pretti died on January 24, 2026, during protests against a federal immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. He was 37, a United States citizen with no criminal record, and he worked as an intensive-care nurse caring for veterans at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. His death came shortly after ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good, another United States citizen, in Minneapolis, and the two killings together set off fierce protests, condemnation from local leaders, and sustained calls for accountability that have continued through the year.
Trump administration officials swiftly defended the Border Patrol agents who killed Pretti, saying he had been trying to attack them with a handgun he was carrying legally. That account was sharply challenged by bystander video of the confrontation. According to Reuters' account of the footage, Pretti was holding a mobile phone, not brandishing a weapon, and was trying to help a protester who had been pushed to the ground when agents pinned him down and shot him. Local authorities have said he held a legal permit to carry a firearm, and the weapon was holstered before agents took it, according to reporting of the video evidence. The gap between the administration's initial account and what the bystander recordings appeared to show has fuelled much of the scepticism that has surrounded the investigation ever since.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty launched a criminal investigation soon after Pretti's death. In March, she sued the Trump administration for access to evidence in the killings of Pretti and Good, as well as the non-lethal shooting of a Venezuelan man, Julio Sosa-Celis, by an immigration agent in January. The lawsuit set up a federal-state confrontation over evidence that has run in parallel with the criminal inquiries themselves, with Minnesota prosecutors arguing that they cannot complete an independent review without the full record, and federal prosecutors arguing that they are not obliged to hand it over on the state's timetable.
There was a period of apparent cooperation in the summer. Moriarty said in July that the federal government was handing over what she described as voluminous evidence related to the shootings. On July 13, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office announced that state investigators had received hard drives containing previously withheld evidence in the deaths of Pretti and Good and the shooting of Sosa-Celis, and said the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had also shared its files with federal prosecutors, with analysis of the material ongoing. For a time, it appeared the evidence dispute might be narrowing. According to Moriarty, it did not stay that way.
When Moriarty's office examined the material received from the Minnesota United States Attorney's Office, it concluded that some information had been withheld, she said earlier in October in a declaration filed in federal district court in Washington. "Furthermore, it is clear that the federal government has obtained additional material since they last shared information with the State," she wrote, "including material obtained through grand jury processes and other witness statements." The declaration put a precise legal shape on the family's broader complaint: this was not only about a family being kept uninformed, but about a state investigation that prosecutors say is being starved of material it needs.
According to court filings described in recent Minnesota reporting, Moriarty said Minnesota United States Attorney Daniel N. Rosen told her on September 10 that further evidence sharing would be paused indefinitely because of challenges with officials in Washington. Reporting by FOX 9, cited in Minnesota coverage of the dispute, said the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension stated earlier in October that federal authorities had stopped cooperating with local investigators, and that evidence still being withheld includes the firearm used to shoot Pretti, the agents' mobile phones, and their recorded statements. Those three categories go to the heart of any reconstruction of the shooting: the weapon, the communications around it, and the agents' own accounts.
Federal prosecutors have responded that they were not obligated to release further evidence because Moriarty's office had not yet initiated legal proceedings in the case. That position, if accepted, would leave the timing of disclosure largely in federal hands until a charging decision or a court proceeding forces the issue. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement on October 22 that state officials were continuing their federal court case seeking access to evidence, and he framed the dispute as concerning additional material still sought by state investigators, rather than a claim that no evidence had ever been shared. No criminal charges against the agents involved had been announced in the reporting reviewed for this article, and no final charging decision or court ruling resolving the current evidence dispute had been independently verified.
The Pretti family's July letter to the attorney general adds a separate legal dimension. The Crime Victims' Rights Act gives victims' families rights that include being treated with fairness and respect for their dignity and privacy, and rights to confer with prosecutors and to be informed about proceedings. Whether those rights require the kind of ongoing communication the family is seeking during an active investigation is contested, and the Justice Department's position is that such communications ordinarily wait until a later stage. The family's argument is that nine months of silence, combined with public statements defending the agents, goes beyond the normal restraint of an investigation and into a refusal to engage at all.
The sharpest words at the news conference came from Pretti's father. "Our experience with the Department of Justice has left us wondering how Alex will ever get justice," Michael Pretti said. "Do your job and stop shielding Alex's killers." In separate remarks reported by the New York Times, Pretti's father said the family had been ignored and misled, and that federal officials had shielded the people responsible for his son's death. The language was deliberately direct, and it marked a break from nine months in which the family had said nothing in public.
Susan Pretti's remarks were quieter and, in their way, just as pointed. "It has been a miserable year for our family," she said. "All we want is justice for Alex [and] that the federal government treat us with the dignity and respect that our son deserves." She said federal officials had used television appearances to attack her son's reputation, trying to smear his name to hide what happened, and she called that response shameful. For a family that had stayed silent through months of public argument about their son, the decision to speak, and the choice of words, carried its own weight.
Attorney Steven L. Schleicher framed the case as a test of whether the system treats victims' families as participants or as bystanders. "It is impossible to convey how the government's refusal to engage in transparent communication with the Pretti family has compounded their heartbreak," he wrote in July. At the news conference he returned to the nine-month timeline, asking why federal authorities had not shared the evidence they hold with other law enforcement agencies. He acknowledged that investigations take time and careful work, but he argued that the passage of time made the silence harder, not easier, to defend.
Not every legal voice at the margins of the case has sided entirely with the family. Mark Osler, a University of St. Thomas law professor and former federal prosecutor, told KSTP that investigations involving a death can require substantial time to examine evidence and consider possible charges, and that prosecutors have legitimate reasons to protect some investigative information. He disputed, however, the suggestion that families ordinarily receive no meaningful communication during an investigation, saying that a family's unanswered requests for contact are unusual and raise concerns about the government's treatment of victims' relatives. The Justice Department's own statement, that family communications come at a later stage, sits uneasily alongside that assessment, and it is likely to be quoted back to the department as the dispute continues.
The Pretti case matters for reasons that reach well beyond one family's grief, though that grief is the story's centre. It is a test of how the federal government investigates its own agents when they kill a United States citizen on an American street, and of whether state prosecutors can conduct a genuinely independent review when the evidence is held by the very government whose agents pulled the trigger. If Minnesota cannot obtain the firearm, the agents' phones, and their recorded statements, its investigation will necessarily be incomplete, and any eventual charging decision will be open to the charge that it was made without the full record.
It also matters because of the sequence of events that followed the shooting. The administration's swift public defence of the agents, before an investigation could have been completed, set a narrative that bystander video then contradicted in important respects. That sequence has shaped public trust in the inquiry ever since, and it explains why the family's demand is framed not only as a request for evidence, but as a demand for dignity: to be told what happened to their son by the authorities responsible, rather than learning it from footage and filings. In a midterm season in which immigration enforcement and the use of federal force have become central political questions, the case has become a reference point for both sides of that argument.
Several tracks now run in parallel. Minnesota's federal court case seeking access to evidence continues, with Attorney General Ellison's October 22 statement confirming that state officials are pressing it. Hennepin County's criminal investigation remains open, and Moriarty's office will have to decide whether it can proceed to a charging decision on the material it has, or whether it must wait for the federal court to compel more. The Justice Department's own investigation also continues, with no announced timetable for a decision on charges against the agents involved.
The family's public intervention changes the politics of that timeline, even if it does not change the law. By speaking for the first time, Michael and Susan Pretti have put a human face on a dispute that had previously been conducted largely through declarations and statements, and they have made it harder for the department to treat the case as a routine matter of investigative sequencing. Whether the department responds with more communication, with a court filing, or with silence will itself become part of the story. For now, the family says it wants two things: the evidence shared with Minnesota investigators, and an answer about what happened to Alex Pretti on January 24.
Readers following the wider accountability debate can also read our coverage of the Justice Department's other high-profile cases, including the third criminal case against former FBI director James Comey, and our reporting on the suspension of visa-free travel for Chinese nationals to the Northern Mariana Islands over security concerns.
Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old United States citizen and intensive-care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. He was fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026, while taking part in protests against a federal immigration enforcement surge.
At their first news conference since his death, Michael and Susan Pretti accused the Justice Department of withholding evidence from Minnesota investigators, misleading and ignoring the family, and shielding the agents who killed their son. Michael Pretti said: "Do your job and stop shielding Alex's killers."
According to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty's court declaration and Minnesota reporting, material still sought includes evidence obtained since the last federal sharing, including grand jury material and witness statements. FOX 9 reporting cited by Minnesota outlets said the withheld items include the firearm used in the shooting, the agents' mobile phones, and their recorded statements.
The department said the timing was consistent with investigations of this kind, and that communications with family members ordinarily come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing, rather than during an investigation. The Minnesota United States Attorney's Office declined to comment on the family's news conference.
No criminal charges against the agents involved had been announced in the reporting reviewed for this article. Both the federal investigation and Hennepin County's criminal investigation remain open, and Minnesota's federal court case seeking access to evidence continues.
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