After Alex Pretti’s Death, the Administration Signals a Shift on Immigration Enforcement

It turns out that President Donald Trump can change direction when a high-profile enforcement effort staged for political impact instead causes blowback. While sending 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota was supposed to embarrass the state’s Democratic politicians and make them look impotent, it instead resulted in the deaths of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti and further alienated a public already turning against hardline immigration policies. The shift is welcome, but the price in lives required to achieve it is too high. It’s also unlikely to bring us the far-reaching law enforcement reform we need.

Monday we learned that Gregory Bovino, known as the public face of the administration’s immigration crackdown, is being relieved of his duties and sent back to his regular Border Patrol job in California. At the same time, two days after the shocking killing by a Border Patrol officer of a facedown Alex Pretti, border czar Tom Homan, known for favoring a lower-key, targeted approach, is on his way to Minneapolis.

“Trump’s pivot came after Republican lawmakers and other allies raised concerns that he was squandering public support for his signature campaign issue and senior administration officials increasingly saw the chaotic scenes in Minneapolis as a political liability,” reports The Wall Street Journal‘s Annie Linskey, Alex Leary, and Michelle Hackman.

Coming so soon after the killing of Renee Good, multiple videos of Pretti’s death, which appears even more egregiously unjustified, shocked the public and further eroded support for Trump’s policies. Polling by YouGov found that 48 percent of respondent’s considered Pretti’s shooting “was not justified” while only 20 percent disagreed (32 percent were “not sure.”) Perhaps even more concerning for the administration is that 46 percent favored abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—more than the 41 percent who wanted to maintain the agency.

So, the Trump administration is softening its language about Pretti and other protesters, shifting personnel, and apparently reconsidering its immigration enforcement tactics. But it wasn’t clear until this week that the administration was willing to give some ground on the signature policy which helped bring Trump back to the White House.

After what looks an awful lot like the murder of Pretti by a federal agent, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller smeared the ICU nurse as a “would-be assassin” and a “domestic terrorist” because he was legally carrying a holstered pistol. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem insisted at a press conference that “this looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” FBI Director Kash Patel accused the dead man of inciting violence.

By all appearances, even with public support fading for harsh immigration enforcement, the administration intended to steer itself onto the rocks of public revulsion and rejection rather than admit error. Immigration worries may have contributed to Trump’s 2024 presidential win, but 61 percent of Americans polled earlier this month by CBS News/YouGov considered ICE’s tactics “too tough.” As early as last July, Gallup reported “a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.” Support for letting undocumented immigrants become U.S. citizens was at 78 percent, up from 70 percent in 2024.

The administration’s armies of enforcers, public roundups of migrants, raids, and confrontational tactics had succeeded in turning Americans into boosters of more-moderate immigration policy. But the GOP seemed stuck on taking the issue to extremes no matter the results.

“The topic of immigration enforcement is like the right’s version of Covid hysteria,” snarked former Libertarian Michigan congressman Justin Amash. As with Democrats during the pandemic, he suggested, Republicans were willing to sacrifice all restraints on government and protections for liberty to fight their chosen bogeyman. And they seemed willing to surrender public support, too.

But the administration didn’t just repulse generic members of the public; it also offended traditional supporters and members of the Republican Party.

Gun-rights groups including the Gun Owners of America, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, NRA, and National Association for Gun Rights, criticized administration officials’ insistence that carrying a standard defensive load—a pistol and two magazines—inherently indicated violent intent on the part of Pretti. Chris Madel, a top contender for the Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nomination, dropped his bid, saying he couldn’t support the GOP’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R–La.) called the killing of Pretti “incredibly disturbing.” He added, “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation.”

Other prominent Republicans, including governors and federal lawmakers, also expressed concern about Pretti’s death and the administration’s tactics. They joined the call for an independent investigation.

So, now the Trump administration is showing signs of moderating its enforcement efforts. That’s welcome. But it won’t resurrect Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It also won’t address the larger issues of militarized policing and excessive enforcement hinted at by Amash in his comparison of immigration to COVID-era public health measures.

“Our criminal justice system (into which we can fairly lump law enforcement orgs like ICE and CBP) is fundamentally broken and profoundly pathological,” points out the Cato Institute’s Clark Neily in a thread on X. He argues that “a substantial number of criminal laws now on the books do not meet the *proper* constitutional standard for overcoming the presumption of liberty and outlawing a given activity” and that the court system coerces people into plea bargains instead of jury trials. “The third and final (for now) pathology of our criminal justice system is the jaw-dropping lack of accountability now on vivid display in Minneapolis, where federal agents who may well have committed a criminal homicide have been anonymously whisked away.”

That means not just the approach to immigration enforcement needs to be reconsidered, but so do the methods used to enforce all laws. The lives of Good and Pretti are too high a price to be paid for reform. If their deaths are to have an impact, that should mean across-the-board reform of the way the government enforces its laws. Unfortunately, it’s probably too much to hope for more than a temporary retreat on one issue.