HENNEPIN CO., Minn. (AP) — The Trump administration has turned over evidence long sought by Minnesota investigators in their ongoing probe into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during pitched protests against an immigration enforcement crackdown earlier this year, state prosecutors announced Monday.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said federal investigators provided previously withheld hard drives containing statements, police body camera video and other evidence in the killings. They also turned over Good’s badly damaged SUV.
“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said. “Any time the government is responsible in whatever way of taking the life of a community member we need to have a full and thorough investigation.”
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed in her vehicle while leaving an anti-immigration enforcement protest in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Her death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse shot and killed by federal officers just weeks later during a Jan. 24 protest, sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement.
The Minneapolis immigration crackdown, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” was billed as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever. It ended in Februaryafter thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents withdrew from the state.
At least eight people have been killed since the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign began last year, but nobody has been charged in connection with them.
On Monday, ICE was involved in a fatal shooting in Maine, but details of what transpired in Biddeford, a coastal city of about 23,000 people roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland, remain unclear.
Last week, an ICE agent in Houston fatally shot a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades while looking for someone else.
Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota, as well as ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Monday.
Legal wrangling in another ICE-related shooting may have led to evidence release
Moriarty said local investigators have been poring over the evidence after receiving it in recent days, but declined to provide details on what prompted the federal government to turn it over.
But documents recently filed in the lawsuit brought by state and local officials against the Homeland Security and Justice departments suggest the breakthrough came after federal officials asked the state in June for evidence gathered in the investigation of ICE agent Christian Castro.
Castro, 52, was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis. Prosecutors say Castro fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh while in pursuit of another man.
State and local prosecutors said they would provide evidence in Castro's case as soon as the federal government agreed to share its evidence in the shootings of Pretti and Good.
“I understand that counsel at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has repeatedly informed you that we are willing to share evidence with you if the exchange is reciprocal,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans wrote. “Each of the federal agencies with whom we have discussed sharing evidence in this case has declined to do so thus far. None has provided any substantive reason for its refusal aside from relaying the perspective that these shootings are solely ‘federal’ matters.”
The pressure may have increased on June 18, when Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison amended their lawsuit against the federal government to add details about the federal government’s refusal to share the evidence collected in the fatal shootings.
Just four days later, Ellison and Moriarty asked the federal judge to push back some deadlines in the case, saying the FBI, U.S. Attorney's office and state officials “have recently re-engaged in discussions about the prospect of mutual information sharing.”
Ellison, in a statement Monday, said he remains “deeply troubled” it took more than half a year for federal officials to hand over the materials despite long standing cooperation between the agencies on major investigations.
“It should never have taken this long,” he said in a statement. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”
Houston investigators complain feds are leaving them in dark over ICE-related shooting
Prosecutors in Houston, meanwhile, echoed similar concerns about obtaining critical information from federal officials as they look into last week's death.
The homeland security department has maintained that homebuilder Lorenzo Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle while attempting to flee, prompting an officer to open fire in self-defense, though the agency has yet to provide evidence of that.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Monday that his office doesn’t even know the identities of the ICE officers involved in the shooting or where they are nearly a week later, which he said is highly unusual when an officer shooting results in a death.
“The federal government has not invited us in," Teare said. "The federal government is not collaborating with us with this investigation.”
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Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this story.
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