Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection — to help litigate the case.
The Trump administration deployed 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents to Minnesota, resulting in months of chaos and fear among the state’s immigrant communities.
Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7 in south Minneapolis; Sosa-Celis was shot and wounded during a struggle with an ICE agent outside his home in north Minneapolis on Jan. 14; and Pretti was shot and killed by multiple Border Patrol agents in south Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
In all three incidents, federal authorities blocked state and local authorities from accessing evidence and refused to cooperate in their investigations. After being turned away from the crime scene of Pretti’s killing, state authorities took the extraordinary step of acquiring a warrant from a judge and returned to the scene but were again turned away by federal authorities.
Ellison during the news conference called federal authorities’ decision not to cooperate with local authorities “arbitrary, capricious and with no rational basis.” He pointed to decades of coordination between local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including last June in the apprehension of Vance Boelter, who has been charged in the killings of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman.
“Those relationships have absolutely nothing to do with who’s in elected office and everything to do with a common desire to keep people safe and solve crimes,” the attorney general said. “It is extraordinary that we need to file this lawsuit at all.”
Ellison, on behalf of the BCA and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, later filed an injunction against the federal government asking a judge to prevent federal agencies from destroying evidence during their investigation into Pretti’s killing. U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud later ruled that the court did not need to get involved in helping preserve the evidence, and expressed confidence in federal authorities’ work.
About three weeks later on Feb. 13, the FBI formally notified the BCA that the FBI would not provide any information or evidence it collected at the scene.
Despite federal authorities’ decision to shut out local investigators, Ellison, Moriarty and the BCA have been conducting their own investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti, as well as the shooting of Sosa-Celis. Moriarty announced last month that she had initiated a formal process to demand the evidence from all three shootings from the federal government, known as Touhy requests.
Current state law gives the BCA authority to investigate all shootings involving law enforcement, but only applies to police officers licensed in Minnesota. A bill from DFL Sen. Ron Latz of St. Louis Park making its way through the Legislature this session would broaden that authority to include federal law enforcement officers.
Asked what her office’s course of action would be should they win the lawsuit and the Trump administration refuses to comply with the court order, Moriarty said “we’re far away from that.” She said she anticipates whichever party loses the suit will likely appeal the decision. But, she said, her office is moving forward with their own investigations regardless, citing the evidence portal her office used to collect more than 1,000 submissions from community members in the Good and Pretti investigations.
“We hope that the federal government cooperates and gives us this information, and that’s why we’re doing this litigation in order to get it,” she said. “At the same time, we continue to move forward with our investigations here, and if at some point it appears we can make a decision without some of the evidence we don’t have, we will make that decision.”
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