Local prosecutors were warned President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in Minnesota would prove fatal, according to a new report.
An agent from the Homeland Security Investigations division told local prosecutors and other officials that Border Patrol agents should not be conducting immigration raids in a city, reported CNN chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper.
“Someone’s going to get killed," that DHS official said.
That official and others from DHS told local officials that Border Patrol typically guarded the southern border and thought of themselves as a last line of defense, and they were used to getting away with a lot, so they feared things would get ugly, according to Tapper.
"The HSI agent’s fears about the unprecedented surge of DHS personnel proved prophetic," wrote Tapper. "The deaths of Renee Good on Wednesday, January 7, and Alex Pretti on Saturday, January 24, at the hands of federal immigration agents, followed soon after."
After Good's death, prosecutors were reportedly alarmed by a call with then-Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino.
Bovino ranted against them for failing to bring charges against protestors he claimed had been assaulting federal officers, but investigators said those complaints turned out to be false once they looked at the evidence, according to the report.
"The immigration agents, the prosecutors concluded, were lying," Tapper reported. "A lot."
Prosecutors were alarmed that the shooting death of the 37-year-old Good, a mother of three, had pushed Bovino to become even more aggressive in his crackdown, the report stated.
“These people are wackos,” Bovino told them. “The sh-t is getting ready to come. We’re not putting up with anything in this city. It’s coming. We’re not going to calm it down, we’re going to put it down.”
“You’ve got 3,000 law enforcement agents that are fixin’ to lock this city down,” Bovino added. “If it doesn’t work, we’re gonna bring 4,000 more. It doesn’t matter to me. We’re going to pacify this place, we’re going to roll ‘em up. We’re not going to wait on the local PD, we’re not going to p--- with it.”
Bovino threatened to occupy the city and made antisemitic remarks about Daniel Rosen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, and they wondered after the call ended whether the Border Patrol commander had been purposefully sent to Minneapolis to spark a riot.
“They’re going to kill someone else,” said one prosecutor on the call, and others agreed.
Days later, two Border Patrol agents shot and killed Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse.
