By Jonathan Allen
July 13 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has turned over to Minneapolis prosecutors evidence it had withheld on immigration agents’ killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and wounding of a Venezuelan man during deportation sweeps in January, local officials said on Monday.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the city’s lead prosecutor, said that the federal government handed over the “voluminous” evidence in the three shootings after six months of discussions, jurisdictional disputes and a lawsuit.
The material includes videos from agents’ body cameras, other digital evidence and Good’s bullet-damaged car, Moriarty said at a press conference, thanking federal officials for their willingness to “consider changing course.”
“We need cooperation. Our community needs it,” she told reporters. “Our democracy requires it.”
Moriarty said the evidence was provided after discussions with Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen’s office in Minneapolis and the FBI’s field office there, neither of which responded to requests for comment on Monday.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Good in her vehicle on January 7, and Border Patrol agents fatally shot Pretti on a street during protests on January 24. Both were U.S. citizens. An ICE agent shot Venezuelan citizen Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg, wounding him, on January 14.
Moriarty’s office is still investigating the killings of Pretti and Good, and she has not announced whether she will bring charges under state law against the federal agents who shot them. But she has already brought charges in the Sosa-Celis shooting, indicting ICE agent Christian Castro under Minnesota law with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
All three shootings took place during Trump’s Operation Metro Surge last winter, in which hundreds of armed immigration agents patrolled Minnesota’s cities seeking to capture immigrants for deportation.
The state’s Democratic leaders denounced the Republican president’s actions, saying violations of Minnesotans’ constitutional rights were widespread, and promised accountability.
Trump officials declined state requests for the evidence, saying only the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security should investigate the federal agents, and incorrectly said the agents had blanket immunity from state prosecutions.
Federal law enforcement officials abruptly ended their usual evidence-sharing cooperation soon after Good’s killing, and the state sued the Trump administration. The litigation continues although Moriarty said it could potentially be settled once the received evidence has been reviewed.
Bringing a state prosecution against a federal law enforcement agent is difficult and rare, and the U.S. government can have the proceedings transferred from a state to a federal court if the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to argue the agent was acting within the scope of their lawful duties.
In February, faced with outrage over the killings, the Trump administration said it was ending the deportation surge in Minnesota and shifting its emphasis to targeted enforcement operations rather than mass sweeps.
Last week an ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man federal officials said had been living in the U.S. without authorization for decades, during a traffic stop in Houston. On Monday, a person was shot dead during an encounter with U.S. immigration agents in Biddeford, Maine.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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