Americanswers… On 5 Live! Another US citizen shot dead by ICE. What happens next?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khaled, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the U.S. has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00this episode, number one, what do we know? Number two, what is the story the Trump administration is telling about this? And is that story changing? Because, number three, are they under much more political pressure than they realised they would be? We will also, I should say, later get to your questions on Five Live on a whole range of subjects, because as usual, there is plenty more going on. Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:30from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:55Hello, it's Justin in our Westminster studio in London. And it's Sarah here in our bureau in Washington. Let's begin, Sarah, with what we actually know factually, because, of course, facts are the... I mean, it's just part of this entire story is how facts are assembled by each side to support their own side. And there seems to be no agreement now in modern America about anything when it comes to what actually happened. But let us try to agree on what actually happened, what we know about what happened. And we're assisted in that, aren't we, by the fact that there is video. Yeah, absolutely. 37-year-old Alex Preti, intensive care nurse who was protesting against ICE agents in Minneapolis, was shot dead on Saturday morning.

2:42That's not in dispute whatsoever. The circumstances of how that happened, though, immediately there were different interpretations of that. And there were several videos very quickly became available on social media. Many, many people will have seen them already. And they are disturbing because what we see in the video is Alex Bretti very clearly with a mobile phone in his hand, not a gun, a mobile phone that he's using to film the ICE officers, as many, many, many of the protesters in Minneapolis are doing. He is pepper sprayed by one of the agents, as is another woman who is standing near him.

3:19He goes to try and help her up after she fell over. He's sprayed again by another agent and a number of them tackle him to the ground. Now, why is not at all clear. But they're on top of him on the ground, sort of grabbing his legs, holding him down. And then it seems as though one of them notices that he has a gun. He has a firearm in a holster on his hip. And the agent takes it out of the holster and removes it. And around about that time, some of the agents, we don't know which ones exactly, are shouting, he's got a gun. But the gun is taken from him before we hear any gunshots. And it's really unclear looking at the videos what provoked one of the agents to start firing at him and then another to carry on.

4:03A total of 10 shots hit Alex Peretti and he is lying on the ground the whole time. Very, very difficult to see what threat he posed to these agents who shot him in the back. It's possible, I guess, that when one of them shouted, he's got a gun, they didn't know that it had been removed from him. But at no point ever was the gun in his hand. You can see that very clearly from the videos. It was a cell phone that he had in his hand at the beginning and there's nothing in his other hand. But as you say, Justin, very, very quickly, people are seeing what they want to in this incident and in these videos and leaping very quickly to the conclusion, either that Alex Peretti was a menace who was threatening violence against these ICE agents who had to react like this in self-defence, or other people who think that they're witnessing a murder in the streets of Minneapolis, basically.

4:56And very, very quickly, we got quite extreme responses from both sides. OK, let's hear both of those now. First, the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noam, speaking on Saturday. At 9.05 a.m. Central Time, the Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officials and officers were conducting targeted operations in Minneapolis against an illegal alien whose criminal history included domestic assault with intentionally inflicting bodily harm, disorderly conduct, and driving without a valid license. An individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.

5:40Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics were on the scene immediately and attempted to deliver medical aid to the subject, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect also had two magazines with ammunition in them that held dozens of rounds. He also had no ID. This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement. Now, Alex Breddy's family, Justin, came out really quickly after that statement to denounce what they said were lies that were being told about their son.

6:18If you look very carefully at what Kristi Noem said, She did say that he had a weapon, not that he was pointing that weapon at agents. But that was clearly the kind of inference of what she was saying when she said he approached Border Patrol officers with a nine millimetre semi-automatic handgun. One, I should say that he is licensed to carry. So he wasn't breaking the law in any way by having that weapon with him. Yeah. So for the other side of it, then let's hear from the governor of Minnesota, Tim Woltz. Well, as I said last week, this federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.

6:56It's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today that campaign claimed another life. I've seen the videos from several angles and it's sickening. But I have a strong statement here for our federal government. Minnesota's justice system will have the last word on this. It must have the last word. As I told the White House in no uncertain terms this morning, the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it, period. Minnesotans are witnessing, and we're creating a log of evidence for the future prosecution of ICE agents and officials responsible for this.

7:39They're helping their neighbors. They're walking their kids to school. They're feeding families. I salute their courage and their restraint, And I call on all Americans to see the decency that this state is exhibiting and the horrific, cruelty, unprofessional, absolute abomination that is passing for what these ICE agents are doing on our streets. Just taking everything he said one step at a time, interesting about the investigation, because, of course, this is a big question, wasn't it, after the first killing, there still hasn't been a court case and may well not be. I mean, can he actually, does he have the power?

8:19We go back to this business of whether the state has the power to prosecute when the officer is a federal officer. Technically, you could be prosecuted by state officials. The problem is the investigation, because the Homeland Security Department were not allowing Minnesota or Minneapolis officials to get involved in any way in the investigation into the shooting of Renee Good. So what has happened in this instance is that fairly extraordinary lengths have been gone to by the Minnesota police to try and investigate this themselves, while at the same time, you've got ICE closing the crime scene, sweeping away evidence, not allowing anybody to come in and investigate this if they're part of state police.

9:04but you've got all of this video evidence around you've got the ability of the police to go and take witness statements from people who were there so they are going to try to mount a state first investigation and then if it's merited prosecution but it will be very very unusual and I imagine it will be fought very hard by the Department of Homeland Security so we're in uncharted territory here but I think on both sides there will be a great determination to try and well either make this happen or stop it from happening and at the level of the administration I wonder if there is such a we've just heard from Kristi Noem and she sounded very certain about what she said plainly some of what she said is to put it mildly that doesn't appear to be true but at the level of the administration can we say that they are beginning to kind of alter their story because initially behind the scenes people were saying this guy was on his way to commit a massacre weren't they and now Donald Trump himself is saying well, we need to review it all, we need to look at what happened, which is a much milder thing for him to say.

10:08What's going on, do you think, behind the scenes, Sarah, in the White House? Yeah, indeed, and the very idea of investigating exactly what happened before leaping to conclusions and making provocative public statements is something that the administration hasn't been going along with up until now when it came to these kind of incidents. I think what it looks like happening is that Donald Trump himself can sense that this isn't going to play well with the public and with voters. in a way that those around him cannot. Because instantly, it wasn't just Kristi Noem. The head of the FBI, Kash Patel, some of the other people in the Trump administration, they were all very, very quick to rush to judgment and insist that Alex Preddy posed a very, very dangerous threat to the ICE agents on the ground.

10:51But Trump waited a beat and now says he's going to be reviewing everything before commenting and very, very interestingly is sending his border czar, Tom Holman, to Minnesota. Now, Minnesota is nowhere near the border, as you know perfectly well, Justin. Well, it's not that far from the Canadian border, but it's certainly nowhere near the southern border that Tom Holman is usually in charge of. Now, he is seen as a real immigration hawk. He is somebody who was all in favour of cracking down hard on the southern border. He was quite moderate, though, in his language after René Goode was killed a couple of weeks ago.

11:27So he's been pretty careful about what he said so far. And the idea that Donald Trump is sending him to look into this, I think, is a slap in the face for Christine Ohm, who has been very, very forthright on this, who loves to shove herself to the forefront of anything controversial and say the most outrageous things that she can come up with. I think Donald Trump can tell now that that is not the way to handle these situations. He wants to de-escalate it a bit. He thinks that Tom Holman might be able to do that. And he was very measured in what he himself personally said about Renee Good as well.

12:02It was J.D. Vance that he sent out to give the real full-throated, aggressive response that MAGA might want to hear about. Out of Donald Trump's own mouth, we haven't heard that kind of thing. And I think that's his spidey senses telling him that actually this is when he doesn't want to end up on the wrong side of. Yeah, and he doesn't have to have that much of a spidey sense, does he, to see that among Republicans and independents in particular, but also actually among Republicans and not necessarily all the usual suspects, the kind of people like Senator Tom Tillis, who's retiring and other people who've criticised him quite a lot recently, that Congressman Massey, is it Thomas Massey, isn't it, who's always attacking him these days, particularly over Epstein.

12:46There are sort of a few who are the usual suspects. But actually, this has gone wider than that. And some conservative newspapers and online outlets have also been suggesting, hang on a second, this is not the way that you should perform. It's not where we expect federal officers to be. And at the very least, there needs to be a kind of open investigation. And he's obviously picking up on that, isn't it? Because, I mean, I really hesitate from saying ever about Donald Trump or his administration that kind of, you know, now they've gone too far because, frankly, people have been saying that since before 2016 and it never turns out to be the case.

13:23But I do think that exactly as you say, Donald Trump actually does have quite a good sense of when he might have gone a bit far or when the rhetoric has gone too far and when the actions have gone too far, potentially, and has the ability to dial back. And it does look as if he's doing it now, doesn't it? Yeah, that's right. There have been several Republican governors have come out and said that they're deeply uneasy about what's going on in Minnesota, as well as a few senators and other senior Republicans whom we don't often hear or some cases ever hear criticising Donald Trump. And then look at somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

13:59Now, she has broken with Donald Trump over the Epstein files. They've fallen out and she's stood down from Congress. Nonetheless, though, I mean, she is very, very MAGA. Her instincts are where Donald Trump supporters are. And you would normally expect her to be very gung ho about ICE agents being allowed to do whatever they wanted to on the streets of American cities. But she said after this shooting that other MAGA supporters need to take their political blinders off and warn that they're being incited into a civil war. And said she unapologetically believes that border security should be allowed to deport illegal aliens and supports law enforcement.

14:36But I also unapologetically support the Second Amendment. And that's important. It's the Second Amendment, Justin, as you know very, very well, is the right to bear arms. And by saying that Alex Peretti was inviting this because he turned up at a protest with a firearm. Basically, what a lot of Second Amendment supporters are hearing is that their right to bear arms is being threatened by this administration of all people. Yeah, and on that, Sarah, you've got Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, very controversial head of the FBI, very much a Trump man saying you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.

15:18It's that simple. You don't have the right to break the law and incite violence. This is in an interview with Fox News, to which the National Rifle Association and various other gun supporting bodies are saying, what? Actually, you do have that right. And it's also very important for those who believe in the Second Amendment. It's incredibly important that you should be allowed to do it. And of course, there was that famous or infamous case, depending on your politics in all of this, that guy, Kyle Rittenhouse, which was a few years ago now, wasn't it? It was in a place called Kenosha. It was the height of Black Lives Matter.

15:53A black person had been shot by the police, someone who was wanted for various offences. There were various riots going on. And Kyle Rittenhouse was a guy, white guy, who went to the riots armed and shot two people dead and a third who survived and was acquitted. And with the great support of conservative Republicans and the great support of gun rights advocates, because they make the point that in America, you do not have to leave your gun at home. It's the whole point of having the gun in the first place. So suddenly the Trump administration has got itself into another mess over whether or not you have the right to bear arms, frankly.

16:37Yeah, because it's this reflexive need to defend the border agents, rush to support them and denigrate anybody who was protesting against them, who has been injured or shot means, yeah, that they're making mistakes like this. Because when Kash Patel says you cannot bring a firearm to any sort of protest that you want, he's wrong. You can. It is a constitutionally protected right. Now, he's correct when he says that you don't have the right to break the law and incite violence. But the Constitution doesn't think that bringing a firearm to a protest is breaking the law or inciting violence. And a lot of people who are maybe constitutional absolutists, who tend to be on the right, people who think that the constitutional amendments are like the Ten Commandments, are seeing the First Amendment being threatened here, the right to free speech, i.e.

17:29the right to protest on the streets of Minneapolis, the way that protesters are being dealt with. The Second Amendment, the right to bear arms being interfered with here. The Fourth Amendment is what protects you from illegal search, seizure and detention. Lots and lots of US American citizens are being rounded up on the streets for protesting, taken into detention, sometimes mistakenly shipped to other states and detention centres, all sorts of rights being interfered with there. And before you know it, you're going to have people who would normally be sympathetic to the idea of these immigration raids, thinking that the way that they're affecting the American citizens who are protesting about them has just gone too far.

18:08Because people who see this as an invasion on the streets of Minneapolis, which is essentially what the governor, Tim Walz, is saying, and people who think that there is an insurrection happening on the streets with these protesters trying to prevent ICE agents from doing what they have been sent there to do. And that's a fairly extreme division on the streets of America right now. Also strikes me that they've not really got their story straight when it comes to trying to convince people that the underlying thing that they're doing is going well. So, you know, this is about rounding up criminals, including dangerous criminals, and there's no question there are some dangerous criminals who have illegally come into the United States who are in the United States.

18:47Nobody would deny that. And most Americans would also say, yeah, round them up and send them away. But I've seen sort of weirdly varying estimates from the White House about how many of these people have been rounded up. And one figure was 10 ,000 came from somewhere, and then someone else was saying 3 ,000. I mean, it just seems to me that in the business of communication, they do need to actually have a story that they can tell to the American people if they are going to convince, particularly independents, people who kind of think that this may not be a bad idea to do this, but maybe they're making a few mistakes along the way.

19:24If those people are going to be brought on board, you've got to be able to tell them a story. And I don't see that story at the moment. No, and some of it is a bit chaotic. You'll have situations where the ICE agents are going after one particular named individual, maybe breaking down the door of somewhere that they think this guy lives, only to find that he is in prison, which they ought to have known, maybe in a state prison, that his name's on a list that's already been handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, that nobody was trying to hide him away in a prison, you know, that they've maybe been informed in several different ways that you will not find the convicted criminal that you're looking for at such and such address.

20:02You'll find him in a penitentiary. And yet, none the rest, they are still storming the streets looking for him because there doesn't seem to be a functioning bureaucracy within the Department of Homeland Security. And that further decreases people's confidence in how they're going about this. And it's that kind of story is going to get more prominence the more you have incidents like this. I read an astonishing figure that more than 80 % of people in America have watched the video of Renee Good being shot. And I imagine a similar number will end up watching these videos of Alex Preti. There's not very many things that happened in America, bar the Super Bowl, I don't think, that actually are seen by 80 % of people in this country.

20:43Yeah. And that then leads to the question, how big a moment is this? In terms of America's politics, in terms of Donald Trump's ability to carry on doing what he wants to do, specifically, I suppose, in terms of the Republicans' ability to win the midterms and keep hold of the House and indeed even the Senate in November, is this a kind of turning point? And I was saying earlier on, the one thing you don't ever want to do with Donald Trump is say, oh, that's it, it's all over. But this does feel quite big, actually. Yeah, it does. It feels as though, especially in an election year with the midterms coming up, it feels like something that people really do care a great deal about.

21:23And it was interesting last week, even before the second shooting, what was happening on the streets of Minneapolis was a much, much bigger story in the American media than the threats to Greenland and the rift within NATO and everything that Donald Trump was doing on foreign affairs when he was speaking in Davos. It was Minneapolis that people were glued to here in the United States and will remain so this week even more as a result of what's happened here. But the Democrats have to play this carefully too. Their response from Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, from Jacob Fry, the mayor of Minneapolis, they've been very, very strong.

22:00You had Jacob Fry, the Minneapolis mayor, saying how many more people have to die before they can get federal agents off the streets of his city, that kind of thing, which are all strong political appeals. But when it comes to the wider politics, what the first thing the Democrats want to do is basically hold up a budget bill that's going to go through Congress sometime very soon because they don't want to approve any more funding for the Department of Homeland Security. and if they don't approve that we could end up with another government shutdown and this is how they want to protest what's happening with ICE agent raids across the country.

22:35But that comes very, very close to defund the police, doesn't it? If the only way you can strike back at the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, is to try and prevent funding it, then you've got to be very careful with the messaging. Are you saying that you don't want illegal aliens to be deported? Are you saying you don't want agents to be able to go after criminals who are living in this country illegally? Because that's not a message that would be popular. So how do you judge it correctly that you can put together some sort of legislative protest, but say it's about the tactics ICE agents are using, not about the concept of deporting people who've got no right to be in America?

23:16Yeah, it's such a good point that because there are also plenty of Democrats on there on the left. There's a progressive left of the Democratic Party. and you think of Mayor Mamdani in New York as being absolute principal among them who would abolish ICE and have long called for the abolition of ICE. They didn't wait for this to happen. They thought the body was out of control some time ago even when most Americans thought it probably wasn't out of control and maybe should be bolstered. Now that ICE is part of American politics, how far can you go? It's an open question really, isn't it? Is it dangerous to call for it to be defunded?

23:54Is it dangerous to call for it to be abolished? Or maybe these shootings mean that it's much less dangerous, certainly in parts of America where the Democrats are powerful. But, of course, if they are going to broaden their appeal, and we've talked so long and hard, haven't we, about how they broaden their appeal, how they still need to broaden their appeal to win the next presidential election, then is all of this going to play against them? So you can see, and you can see within the party, can't you, already actually tensions between those who want to say, who want to keep it under wraps, that kind of sense of we've got to abolish all of this and start again, and those who want to go for it.

24:33Yeah, and I mean, is ICE fit for purpose? Can ICE be brought under control? I mean, I think it's pretty clear from some of the videos we've seen that their training leaves something to be desired. I mean, they doubled their numbers very, very quickly. So how experienced or how well trained some of these agents that are on the streets are, I think is a very important question as well as an open question at the moment. Some of the mistakes they've made in the people that they've been detaining and that kind of thing as well. I mean, I think there may be a perfectly good argument for saying that you need to start again with an agency who is in charge of the enforcement of customs and immigration.

25:09Maybe you do need to abolish ICE and replace it with something. But, yeah, it's a difficult and potentially dangerous political question for some Democrats. OK, then we promised you more questions because, as ever with Donald Trump, there is always a lot to discuss. Your questions rather than our attempted answers. So, for instance, did Donald Trump properly apologise over Afghanistan? What about the president's bruised hand? What's going on there? What about the threats to Canada over China? It is Monday, so we did it all live on Five Live with Matt Chorley. And Anthony and Mariana joined us.

25:46Here we go.

25:56Let's turn to something quite rare which happened over the weekend. A Donald Trump climb down of sorts. So, you remember, at the end of last week, huge uproar Thursday, Friday over his claim that non-American NATO troops avoided the front line in Afghanistan, which prompted criticism from veterans and politicians, including from Keir Starber. Well, over the weekend, he wrote online, the great and the very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America. In Afghanistan, 457 died. Many were badly injured and they were among the greatest of all warriors. It is a bond too strong to ever be broken.