'If You Can Keep It': ICE’s Latest Minnesota Killing

0:07It's been less than three weeks since a federal ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-year-old poet Renee Macklin-Good in Minneapolis. The story from the Trump administration came swiftly. Macklin-Good was dangerous and the shooting was justified. But videos refute that story and protests erupted nationwide in reaction. Local officials called for calm and for ICE to leave their state. Now, a new killing by immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis and the same pattern of false narrative from the Trump administration. Federal agents shot 37-year-old Alex Preddy to death on Saturday. And once again, the administration immediately jumped in, painting Preddy as a violent criminal.

0:50The president's top advisor on immigration, Stephen Miller, called Preddy an assassin. The vice president reposted that lie. Other officials said Preddy, who was an ICU nurse at a VA hospital, was on the streets to harm immigration agents. And once again, the video evidence undermines those claims, this time even more clearly than before. And again, lawmakers are calling for ICE to get out. We need ICE out of Minnesota. They are not making us more safe. As the tragic, tragic killing this morning, as people saw it viscerally on that video, shows us they are making us less safe. That was Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota on Saturday.

1:36On Monday, President Trump said that border czar Tom Homan will head to Minneapolis. For this installment of our weekly series, If You Can Keep It, about the health of our democracy, we start with the latest in Minneapolis. How has the operation the administration says is about immigration enforcement transformed into something else entirely? Later, we turn to Congress and how it's responding to this moment in Minnesota, and also how the legislative branch has lost, or in many cases, willingly given up power to this and previous presidents. How is this imbalance intensifying after decades, the executive branch growing its power?

2:13I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilling. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. All that and more right after this. Stay with us.

2:24Let's get into the conversation with Matt Sepik. He's a correspondent for Minnesota Public Radio. Matt, thanks for being here. Glad to be back. Matt, let's start with Alex Preddy. What do we know about him so far? Well, according to the obituary that my colleagues put together, which you can see at mprnews.org, M as in Minnesota, he's been being remembered as a person who was kind, competent, and quiet. He was 37 years old, worked as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Hospital, a government employee killed by the government he served. And some really poignant video has been making the rounds on social media of Preddy.

3:11This was from about a year ago, so December of 2024. for he is seen standing at the foot of a gurney in a hospital hallway giving a final salute to a 77-year-old veteran who had just died. And he says, today we remember that freedom is not free. Matt, I can hear that even as you're reading that. Yeah. It's tough stuff. It's tough stuff. And you are in Minneapolis. And watching all of this unfold, and I just want to read some of the statements we've heard from the administration so far. A tweet from the Department of Homeland Security's official ex-account says, quote, The officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted.

4:00The head of Border Patrol, Gregory Bovino, said it, quote, Looks like Petty wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both claimed pretty, quote, attacked officers at the scene. And to be clear, there is no evidence that supports any of these claims from the administration. Not a shred, not a shred of evidence. There's video from multiple angles. He never unholsters that firearm. In fact, you know, one analysis, several analyses of these videos showing him being disarmed by an agent before he is shot on the ground as he is laying on the ground.

4:40I was on the air briefly on Saturday on the Bulwarks live stream just following the shooting. They were doing some breaking news. And one of the editors there, Jonathan V. Last, remarked that the shooting reminded him of a drug gang execution. And I heard a similar comparison from a friend who has some experience investigating street gangs. And I want to read a quote to you, and I think this is important. This is from Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She's certainly been making the rounds doing various media appearances over the past few years. She's an expert on authoritarianism, a historian at NYU, has particular expertise on fascist Italy.

5:22And this is what she wrote on her blog yesterday. These deliberate shows of extreme violence, which they know will be witnessed, filmed, and shared, are an attempt to traumatize and break the city's population and subjugate the city's elected leaders. We will execute your people until you stop. Your defiance is the message. End quote. They're from authoritarian scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat. But I can tell you, this city has not been broken. We are holding our own here. And Professor Ben-Ghiat, of course, has been on this show and on If You Can Keep It many times. We value her expertise here. Local officials, the mayor, Jacob Fry, have spoken out, held a press conference police chief Brian O 'Hara over the weekend.

6:06Matt, but you said that residents might be seeing this message that resistance is futile or the tacit message of authoritarianism as Professor Ben-Ghiat describes it. What's been the response on the streets from Minneapolis residents over the last two days? It's been defiant. I mean, people are not being cowed by this. Of course, the day before the shooting on Friday, there were well over 10 ,000, 15 ,000, maybe more people who walked in sub-zero temperatures, gathered on the streets in downtown Minneapolis and marched peacefully through the streets. Mayor Jacob Fry remarked at a news conference on Saturday that not one window was broken and not one person was hurt.

6:51Now, after this shooting on Saturday, things did get tense. The police chief said that they did have to, at one point, declare an unlawful assembly because a crowd had surrounded local police at the scene of the shooting and police did use some chemical irritants to disperse that crowd. They did shut down that street. It's a stretch of Nicollet Avenue immediately south of downtown Minneapolis. But by Sunday morning, I saw an email from the city that said things had been peaceful. Things were quiet. So they reopened the street. There has not been rioting here. Certainly, the city is on edge. People are angry.

7:38People are mourning. But there has not been the violence that many people were expecting. And I would not describe what's happening here as a powder keg about to explode. I would say if you're not following the news, if you're not looking at social media, you could drive through much of this city and not really know what's going on because these actions by federal agents, and I'm not even going to call them law enforcement because that's not what this is. They're targeted in certain areas, and certainly the people in those areas have been going through untold amounts of trauma. But just something I noticed on Saturday, I was running from my office to City Hall for a couple of different news conferences with the mayor and police chief, another with the U.S.

8:26senators and others from the congressional delegation. while they were describing in the third floor press room what sounds really like something with all the hallmarks of a constitutional crisis. There was a wedding going on in the rotunda of City Hall downstairs as I had packed up and left. Normal life is continuing here for much of the city. Well, when we think about the case of Renee Macklingood, again, this is the woman who an ICE agent shot and killed in early January. Minnesota's State Investigative Bureau said that federal law enforcement blocked them from accessing evidence and case materials.

9:07What's happening in this case with Alex Preddy's shooting? What kind of access are local officials being given to the scene? And we should note that on Sunday, a U.S. District Court judge granted a temporary restraining order against DHS, barring it from altering or destroying evidence connected to the killing. Isn't that remarkable that it even comes to this? There's a lot playing out right now in the federal courts. And yes, that is one of the things. In fact, there's a hearing about that this afternoon in front of a judge in St. Paul. They've granted a temporary restraining order because the city, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state police investigative agency, actually had to go to federal court and ask a judge to order.

9:54federal agents, federal agencies, not to destroy evidence in this shooting that happened on Saturday of Alex Preddy. Yeah, Matt, I did not understand that order because destroying or altering evidence is against the law. That's what I thought. You need a court order to tell you not to do that? Well, apparently, and that's where we are at this point. It's really quite remarkable. And the BCA, I mean, normally in most circumstances, the BCA Bureau of Criminal apprehension, works closely with the FBI. I mean, they've worked together on many cases over the years, and the feds have completely blocked them out.

10:34The BCA actually went and got a search warrant to go to this scene, and they were not able to get any access to evidence. I mean, federal agents here are defying a search warrant from a sovereign judge of a sovereign state. Incredible. Back with more in a moment.

10:57Getting back into the conversation about the latest in Minnesota, let's hear this clip of Governor Tim Walz. He spoke on Sunday at a press conference in Minneapolis, along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Allison. And you know what you saw. And then you heard the most powerful people in the world, certainly in this country, President, Vice President Greg Bovino, Kristi Noem, narrate to you what you were looking at, that this was a domestic terrorist crazed running at law enforcement with the intent to kill massive numbers of them sullying his name within minutes of this event happening and then closing the crime scene sweeping away the evidence defying a court order and not allowing anyone to look at it i don't care if you are conservative and you are flying a donald trump flag you're a libertarian don't tread on me, you're a democratic socialist of America.

11:55This is an inflection point, America. If we cannot all agree that the smearing of an American citizen and besmirching everything they stood for and asking us not to believe what we saw, I don't know what else to tell you. That's Tim Walts, the governor of Minnesota, speaking on Sunday in Minneapolis. Now, Now, the governor also activated Minnesota's National Guard on Sunday, and Minneapolis officials said it was because its police force was stretched thin due to federal agents causing a, quote, disruption in public safety. Matt Sepik, what do we know about where those troops will be placed and what they will do and what the governor intends here?

12:36Well, they have been supporting local law enforcement as they did, I should say, belatedly after the killing of George Floyd back in 2020. And, of course, that's the important context here that you have to remember is that both the mayor of Minneapolis and Governor Walz five and a half, almost six years ago, really were raked over the coals for the slowness of their response in getting the National Guard out on the streets to protect the city from looting and burning and what we all saw. As I said, that has not happened here. There have been some points of tension in the streets, but the city has not erupted.

13:19There have not been riots. And the guard has been out, as I say, to support local law enforcement. The city of Minneapolis police force is around 600 people. There was a major wave of resignations after 2020, and Police Chief Brian O 'Hara has made it a priority here to rebuild that force. But keep in mind, we've got around 3 ,000 federal agents masked in this town. That is about, what, five times the size of the MPD. So the guard has been out. What's interesting, too, is they are wearing yellow reflective construction vests because they have military-style uniforms similar to what Border Patrol and ICE have been wearing.

14:09The Guard, of course, is not wearing face masks. They have, you know, no reason to hide their identity and what they're doing. But they have been out on the streets. It's not exactly clear how many are out right now, but they have been visible. Obviously, they're visible if they're wearing yellow reflective vests. One thing that I did note, a lot of them have been outside the Whipple Federal Building. And this is a building where ICE has a detention center and the immigration court for this area is located. It's just outside of Minneapolis, right on the edge of the International Airport. And that area has been the locus of many of these protests that we've seen.

14:54And there have been some tensions there. But the protests, I was down there briefly last week as people kind of lined up along the sidewalk with signs. Just a normal type of protest activity that you see. But interesting to note that I saw yesterday a couple of media outlets reported that National Guard members there in their yellow vests were handing out coffee and donuts. to anti-ICE protesters, a definite show of goodwill and definitely a way to send the message that they are there to keep the peace. And very good PR on the National Guard's part, I should say. We got this question from Reed in Florida who says, can anyone comment on Pam Bondi's letter to Tim Walls indicating the ICE agents could be removed if Minnesota would turn over its voter roles.

15:46Sounds like extortion to me. And they're referring to a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondy, and she outlined something Minnesota officials, things Minnesota officials could do to basically have immigration enforcement at least reduced in the state. And that includes the state sharing records on Medicaid and food nutrition services, repealing sanctuary policies, having state correction facilities cooperate with ICE, and also sharing voter registration roles with the federal government. How are state officials responding to that, Matt? Well, we got a big fat no from Steve Simon. He is the Secretary of State for Minnesota, a Democrat, and he oversees the elections here.

16:37And he has been fighting with DOJ in court, and this has been going on for a while, where they have sought voter rolls in Minnesota, which Simon and the state attorney general's office argues they have absolutely no legal authority to do. It's part of an effort on DOJ's part to craft a narrative that there is major voter fraud in Minnesota. President Trump claims several times that he has won the state three times. That is not true at all. There has not been any indication of widespread voter fraud here. I mean, there are cases, you know, piecemeal here and there, as there are in every state where people try to pull something.

17:28But we know about them because they have been prosecuted. But Steve Simon, in a statement, I believe over the weekend, said that, yeah, there's no legal authority for the state to go after – or the DOJ, rather, to go after Minnesota's voter rolls. And, in fact, they're protected by Minnesota law. You can't just hand that stuff out to anybody that asks. It is protected personal data. Matt, one thing that's different in Alex Preddy's killing from Rene Good's killing just a couple of weeks ago is the reaction of a handful of Republicans in Congress. Now, we're going to talk about Congress in just a few minutes here on the show.

18:10But there's a nexus here with what's going on in Minneapolis. a number of high-profile Republicans, including the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Andrew Garbarino, has now come out, demanded that leaders of ICE and CBP testify before Congress. Congressman Michael McCaul, who's retiring from Texas, has spoken out. A handful of Republican senators have demanded investigations, called for impartial joint federal investigations in one case. Even some Trump allies, Senator Pete Ricketts, called for transparency in the investigation. What do you think is changing in Minneapolis nationally from your standpoint that's leading, admittedly, a small but a noticeable handful of Republicans in Congress to transition from silence and acquiescence to at least pronouncing the sentences and the verbiage of investigation?

19:05Right. And I think it has a lot to do with that video. And the contrast between the lies and the coordinated campaign of disinformation and I call it on the air information warfare coming out of the Trump administration. You recall that right after Preddy was killed, the DHS put out a photo of the gun that they took from Preddy to imply that because he had a firearm, he was intent on killing federal agents, massacring federal agents, as one Trump administration official said. But as I mentioned earlier, he never even pulled that firearm out of his holster. And it's important to note here, too, he had no criminal record, just traffic tickets, as many of us do.

20:01He, as I said, Mr. Preddy, was a nurse at the VA hospital, and he had a permit to carry that firearm. And the implication was from Kash Patel, other administration officials, that he shouldn't have had that gun at the protest. And we talked with a longtime Second Amendment gun rights advocate here the other day, Rob Doerr, with the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus. And he says there's no law against carrying a firearm at a protest. He was well within his rights. Doerr said, you know, permit to carry holders, they're allowed to carry in public. There's nothing inherently criminal about that. And he said an important thing, too.

20:47You also don't have to choose between exercising your First Amendment rights or your Second Amendment rights. And that's what he was doing here. He's carrying a firearm legally. Matt, just a couple of additional questions. We got this from Charlie, who says, are the agents involved in the Petty shooting reassigned and still working? And again, these are Border Patrol agents involved in this incident. Do we know whether these agents are still working? No. We have no idea who they are, where they are, where they've been assigned, what their training is. I mean, typically when there is a shooting involving a member of law enforcement, you know, they are put on administrative leave.

21:30Certainly on the state and city level here, There is a process. They're put on leave. They're given time off while the investigation proceeds. So there's no interference or appearance of interference with an investigation. investigation, usually if it involves an officer. I mean, we saw that with the killing of George Floyd, the state investigators, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the feds worked together in the case of Derek Chauvin. He was charged with murder, convicted at trial on the state level, and later pleaded guilty on the federal level because the state and feds were working together with violating George Floyd's civil rights, and Chauvin serving around 20 years concurrent sentence on that.

22:15There is no indication of what kind of investigation may be happening. DHS says it's investigating the shooting itself, which is unheard of these days, for a law enforcement agency to investigate its own shooting. It's for transparency after high-profile police killings. There are usually outside agencies that do the investigation here in Minnesota. It would be BCA State Police. would investigate a shooting by a local officer. It's taken out of the hands of the local police. And there's no indication here of who is investigating or what, or what evidence they've collected. And the agents who shot Alex Preddy, they didn't stick around.

23:02They took off right after this shooting. They didn't preserve the scene. There were protesters there who gathered around to do what agents or any law enforcement is supposed to do is keep people from traipsing through and disrupting the scene so people can collect evidence. There was no police procedure followed here at all. Well, Matt, I'm sure we'll be checking in with you as this story continues to play out. And we really appreciate your time and reporting. Always glad to do it. It's an important story. Thanks, Matt. That's Matt Sepik. He's a correspondent for Minnesota Public Radio. And let's turn now to Representative Melanie Stansbury.

23:41She's a Democrat representing New Mexico's first congressional district, which includes Albuquerque. She's part of a group of House Democrats who introduced articles of impeachment earlier this month for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And she joins us now from New Mexico. Representative Stansbury, welcome to the program. Great to be here. So first, I just want to get your brief reaction to this latest killing in Minneapolis by immigration agents. You know, I think we're all heartbroken and infuriated, but also terrified because what we're seeing out on the streets right now is not only the abuse of power, the use of violence against our communities, but also in the gaslighting that the administration is doing.

24:24It feels like our democracy and truth is slipping away. And I think for many Americans, this feels like a tipping point. Like, this is the point at which we can't go back. And that's why it's so important that Congress exercises its power and we take back our country right now. Congresswoman, one of the things that's happening in Congress now since this latest killing is that several Democrats in the Senate have said, we won't vote for any DHS funding upcoming that doesn't rein in ICE. We're done with this. We'll have a government shutdown. None of us are voting for it. That's not how this story started.

25:02Last week, seven of your Democratic colleagues voted to approve DHS funding after the killing of Renee Good. Why do you think enough Democrats voted for DHS funding with no additional oversight in this moment? What's going on with them? You know, I am of the opinion that our responsibility is to the Constitution, to the voters, to the constituents that we represent. And that means that in this moment when our democracy is imperiled, we have to use every single tool we have. That means impeachment. That means the power of the purse. That means legislation. That means oversight. That means using our voices.

25:42But I think it's important to understand that the Democrats in the House who did make a choice to vote for DHS funding were all in what they call frontline districts. Those are districts that Trump won. They're looking at the politics and the voices of their own communities. and I've seen multiple statements from my colleagues who are now saying, I didn't look at it through the lens as a referendum on the administration and I was wrong. And so I think what you've seen over the last week is that Democrats in all districts are now saying, if we don't do something to rein in this administration, we could lose everything.

26:16In other words, it wasn't obvious last week, but it's obvious now to those Democrats. Well, I can't speak for any of them. It was obvious to me that they made the choices that they made, and I think the American people have made their voices clear at this point. We're speaking to Representative Melanie Stansbury. She's a Democrat representing New Mexico's first congressional district in the House of Representatives. Tony writes, my husband and I are both veterans who chose to live in St. Paul, Minnesota, even though neither of us was originally from here. He's an Army retiree who gets his care at the Minneapolis VA.

26:49We were already reeling from Renee Good's murder to describe it as anything else's denying reality. Alex's murder just reaffirmed our desire to see ICE totally disbanded completely. There is no reforming this out-of-control paramilitary. And we heard from Tom, who says, My biggest fear is this convicted felon invoking the Insurrection Act and canceling all national voting in 2026. We need a 50-million-person march in this country. We need to shut down the country. We'll be right back with a representative in just a moment.

27:23Well, Congresswoman, we talked a little bit about shifting tides in the Congress over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Now, there was a government shutdown, people will remember, in the fall, largely over Affordable Care Act subsidies. And eventually, there was a group of Democrats in the Senate that voted to reopen the government, and those subsidies expired. They still haven't been renewed. Now there's another shutdown fight looming. DHS funding is part of it. We talked a little bit about how senators now say they're not voting for DHS without new restrictions on ICE and its activities and how seven of your Democratic House colleagues voted for that before the killing of Alex Preddy.

28:09One thing that happened, though, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of your caucus, the leader of the Democrats in the House, he voted against that DHS funding, but he didn't whip it. In other words, he didn't insist to Democrats that we need unity on this vote. Everybody can vote how they see fit. Now that this issue is going to come back up and there's a shutdown, another potential shutdown in the offing here, Congresswoman, how far do you think your leadership in the House is willing to go on this issue of DHS and ICE. You know, yesterday our caucus met and we were briefed by both the governor and the AG of Minnesota, and we had a conversation about all of this.