Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says the Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by two Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis amid a federal immigration crackdown.
Blanche said he did not want to overstate the move, and instead characterized it as a "standard investigation by the FBI when there are circumstances like what we saw last Saturday."
"And that investigation, to the extent it needs to involve lawyers at the civil rights division, it will involve those," he said.
The FBI on Friday said it would lead the investigation into Pretti's shooting.
Previously, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations branch had been spearheading the probe, an unusual move according to current and former law enforcement officials. HSI is not typically tasked with investigating law enforcement shootings and does not have the equipment to handle such evidence, the officials said.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was the second U.S. citizen killed in Minneapolis by federal agents this month. Renee Good, a mother and poet, was killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
After Good's shooting and the decision not to open a civil rights investigation into her death, several career prosecutors in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, as well as in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota, resigned.
Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis earlier this week pressed the U.S. attorney over the lack of a civil rights investigation and warned that more resignations could come.
This is a developing story. Check back for more.
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ICE agents ordered not to engage with Minnesota protesters, and more headlines
ICE agents ordered not to engage with Minnesota protesters, and more headlines
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