Even the Top Prosecutor in Minneapolis Doesn’t Know the Identity of the Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti

In the two months Minnesota has been under siege by federal agents, immigration officers have shot and killed two U.S. citizens, poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Local and state law enforcement say they’ve been blocked from properly investigating the shootings of Good and Pretti. 

“The federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that’s the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police,” says Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is leading local investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti. 

“We’ve not gotten anything from the federal government,” Moriarty says. “To tell you how odd this situation is, we are getting our information from the media … we are not getting that from the federal government.” 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Moriarty, whose office has jurisdiction over both killings. Moriarty says federal agents have blocked local and state law enforcement from properly investigating the killings. Even Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Minneapolis, does not know the identity of the agents who killed Pretti. 

In response, Moriarty says, “We set up a portal and asked the community to send any kind of videos or any other kind of evidence so that we could collect absolutely everything that we possibly could.” The BCA, she says, was even “blocked physically, actually, by federal agents from processing the scene where Alex Pretti was shot.”

Meanwhile, attacks by the administration on Minnesota’s Somali citizens persist. At her first town hall of the year in Minneapolis, an attendee sprayed Rep. Ilhan Omar with an unidentified substance on Tuesday. Trump has backtracked on some of his bluster and removed Border Patrol Gregory Bovino from Minnesota, replacing him with border czar Tom Homan.

None of that has changed things on the ground yet in Minneapolis, says Moriarty. “Minnesotans care about their neighbors. They’re delivering meals to people. They are there and they do not approve of the fact that their federal government is attacking them and their neighbors.

“We hear a lot of people talking to us about how they understand the threat from the administration or from DHS on their neighbors and on their communities, and it’s really much more rooted in an understanding that they think their freedoms are under threat, even if they are not an immigrant or even if they don’t really have deep ties to immigrant communities, that this really matters to them and it really bothers them,” says Jill Garvey, co-director of States at the Core, an organization that leads and runs ICE Watch training programs. “So we hear a lot from folks who just haven’t been engaged previously. But this for all those reasons is enough for them to step up.”

Garvey says her organization is training community members in how to properly document ICE. “We also know that we can’t stop all this aggression,” Garvey says. “The aggression is the point of these operations. So we can’t guarantee that people aren’t going to be targeted with violent actions from federal law enforcement. What we can say is, if you’re doing this in community, other people are going to be watching.”

Garvey says the administration’s claims that paid agitators are fueling protests around the country is a baseless attempt to save face as public opinion turns against it. 

“It’s just another part of the propaganda machine. They need an explanation for why they’re losing. … This is a very basic training that we’re providing and that most other people are providing to folks rooted in how to be a good neighbor, frankly. How to assert your rights, how to protect your neighbor’s rights,” says Garvey.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 

Transcript 

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy. 

Federal agents have shot three people in Minnesota, killing two U.S. citizens, since they descended on the state in December as part of President Donald Trump’s massive surge in efforts to hunt down immigrants. 

Kristi Noem: Let me deliver a message from President Trump to the world. If you are considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it. Let me be clear: If you come to our country and you break our laws, we will hunt you down. 

AL: The administration quickly tried to paint poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti — the two people killed by ICE and Border Patrol Agents this month in Minneapolis — as “domestic terrorists.”

KN: If you look at what the definition of “domestic terrorism” is, it completely fits this situation on the ground. This individual, as you saw in the video that we released just 48 hours after this incident, showed that this officer was hit by her vehicle, she weaponized it …  

Reporter: The White House has labeled the man who was killed in Minnesota a “domestic terrorist.” Is that something you agree with? And have you seen any evidence?

KN: When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of “domestic terrorism.”

Gregory Bovino: This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

AL: But video evidence circulating online and digital investigations from various news outlets flatly refuted those claims. After massive outrage from the public and even some of Trump’s Republican colleagues — several of whom are now joining Democratic calls for him to fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — Trump has, as of Monday, appeared to backtrack on some of his bluster.

After having attacked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz publicly and blaming him and other Democrats for the killing of Pretti, Trump spoke by phone with Walz and said they “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” For his part, Walz said Trump had agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota.

By Tuesday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and several agents were set to leave the state. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, is expected to take over. The two agents who fired at Pretti — whose identities are still not public — have been placed on administrative leave as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, local and state law enforcement have accused federal agents of stymying investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti, and have sued to stop the feds from destroying evidence in both cases. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who oversees criminal cases in Minneapolis and has come under attack from Trump’s Department of Justice, has called Trump’s decision not to conduct a federal investigation into the killing of Renee Good “incomprehensible.” Moriarty’s office has jurisdiction to investigate both killings. 

Now, we’re joined by Minneapolis’s chief prosecutor, who’s part of the team of state and local officials investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Welcome to the show, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

Mary Moriarty: Thank you so much.

AL: We’re speaking on Wednesday morning, and your office just held a press conference announcing the formation of the “Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach.” Can you tell us about what the aims of this group are? Who’s in it?

MM: It was formed to support prosecutors around the country with resources and just a collaboration should the federal government come into their cities or their jurisdictions, because these issues can be complicated and sometimes resources are scarce and it’s helpful to have the support of other people around the country. 

The other goal, I think, is to really assure the public. One of the things that we’ve seen here in Minneapolis, and in Hennepin County and in Minnesota, is that people are seeing federal agents engage in behavior which seems unlawful or at least inappropriate, and they aren’t seeing any consequences or accountability.

I have tried to make it very clear that as Hennepin County attorney — and by the way, that’s Minneapolis and its many suburbs — that our office does have jurisdiction over shootings, any kind of homicide that happens in Hennepin County. It does not matter where you work, if it’s federal government or not. We do have jurisdiction. 

There are some more complicated issues involving potential federal defenses, but those are something we would face in court. And so I think it’s helpful for us as prosecutors to be collaborating across the country to ensure our communities that we will stand up and we will hold people accountable should they engage in unlawful behavior in our cities.

AL: In that vein, can you tell us about the investigations you’re conducting into the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

MM: So, as you know, and as I think the country probably knows, the federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that’s the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police. Now their authority is statutory for Minnesota Peace Officers, but they still have the expertise. This is all they do.

And I had talked to the FBI, I had talked to the U.S. attorney, I had talked to the head of the BCA when Renee Good was killed. And we all had an agreement — which was unsurprising because all of us work well together — that there would be a joint investigation into the shooting and killing of Renee Good. And then suddenly, the BCA got kicked out. We were told that came from Washington, the administration, essentially. And so we were determined to do as much investigation as we could in conjunction with the BCA. 

We set up a portal and asked the community to send any kind of videos or any other kind of evidence so that we could collect absolutely everything that we possibly could. And the whole goal is to try to collect enough evidence to make a decision about whether charges are appropriate or not. And we are actually doing the same thing in the shooting of Alex Pretti; the BCA is conducting an investigation there. They were also blocked physically, actually, by federal agents from processing the scene where Alex Pretti was shot.

That actually led us to get a search warrant. The BCA drafted a search warrant. We made sure a judge was available. And so a judge signed a search warrant, and federal agents would not allow access to the scene even with that. And so that is why we filed the lawsuit in federal court Saturday. And we asked also for a temporary restraining order to force the government to preserve and not alter any of the evidence in that case. Later Saturday evening that was granted by a federal judge. And then there was a hearing two days later on Monday for the judge to hear from both parties to decide whether that TRO should be permanent — and we’re waiting to hear the judge’s ruling on that.

AL: So your office and the BCA sued the Department of Homeland Security, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel. It’s my understanding that in this hearing that you’re talking about, the judge didn’t issue an immediate decision, but it’s still ongoing and you have this temporary restraining order to provide access to evidence. Have you been able to access it?

MM: No. So actually the temporary restraining order was actually just to force the federal government to preserve and not alter.

AL: Mmm, OK. 

MM: We’re not at the point of getting access or asking the court for access yet. It was because they were, like I said, physically preventing the BCA from processing the scene.

I have heard various officials in the administration make the claim that it was actually the public that prevented the BCA from entering the scene. I don’t know if that’s a lie, or they just don’t know what they’re talking about, but we had a prosecutor there. I was in contact with the BCA. I was watching livestream video, and you could see federal agents standing about 2 feet apart with large batons. And so there’s absolutely no way the community prevented the BCA from getting there.

But because they went to such great lengths to block the BCA from trying to just do what they normally do — what their job is — and because of hearing very plainly that the administration has no intent to investigate the shooting of Renee Good — in fact, bizarrely, they were going to investigate her and her widow —we are taking this step by step. And so the first step was to ask a court to order the federal government to preserve that evidence and not alter it in any way.

AL: You’ve said that you have substantial evidence to consider charges in the case. Are you going to charge the officers in — I’m talking about both cases — in Good’s case and in —?

MM: My goal was to collect as much evidence as we possibly could and then make a decision about whether charges are appropriate or not. I’m not going to say what we’re going to do or promise that we are going to do it because it really is important to gather as much evidence as we can.

We still don’t have the autopsy results in either case. That’s not unusual because the medical examiner does not issue preliminary results. They’re very cautious; they do a bunch of testing. I understand what it’s going to say in the Renee Good case, and I know that the family has released the results of an independent autopsy.

But I think both autopsies will be very important evidence — maybe even more than, say, in most cases, we would want the gun, we would want the shell casings, we want the car in the Renee Good case. But we get cases submitted to us every day that don’t have all of the evidence that we would want. That’s just not how things work. And so the goal is to get as much as we can and to get to a point where we feel like, OK, we’ve got enough here to make a decision. 

The important thing, I think, for the public here and across the country is that the BCA, when they complete an investigation and once the case is closed, whatever that looks like, they post the investigation on their website. Anybody can take a look at it. And our goal, also, is very complete transparency. We make a decision, and we explain to people what evidence we were relying on, and I think that’s the only way people have trust in their government — the only way they can have trust in their government if they can actually see what the evidence said and understand why a decision is made.

So that’s really important. We have not made a decision about whether charges are appropriate, but I do believe, and my statement was that we are going to get enough evidence to be able to make those decisions.

AL: On Tuesday, Customs and Border [Protection] notified Congress that two agents fired their guns during the killing of Pretti. Was your office aware of that prior to that statutory? This was like a statutory notification that The Associated Press obtained and reported. 

MM: Yes. We’ve got videos, many different videos, and we’ve looked, we’ve synced them. We’ve looked at it from many different ways, and it certainly appeared that way.

But one interesting thing is, we’ve not gotten anything from the federal government. So I was asked recently about “Have we received the body cam from the federal agents?” Well, I have no official notification that the federal agents were wearing body cam. So, I mean, to tell you how odd this situation is: We are getting our information from the media or from that report; we are not getting that from the federal government.

AL: Similarly, there’s been some discussion around figuring out the identity of the officers who shot Alex Pretti. I’m assuming that your office is aware of the identity of these officers?

MM: No — they haven’t shared that with us. And so this is a question that people have asked me that I think people probably have interest in. They’ll say, “Why don’t you just subpoena records? Why don’t you just subpoena the identities?” that kind of thing.

If this was state, if we were trying to seek information from a state agency or records or something like that, it would be very straightforward. We could subpoena it. There’s a body of law by the U.S. Supreme Court that if you are seeking information from a federal agency, you can’t just issue a subpoena. You have to make the case — and to bore everybody to tears or to get into the weeds, it’s called — 

AL: Please do.

MM: TOUHY, T-O-U-H-Y. It outlines a process that you have to go through to ask for information. So it doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get it. So we’re taking this step by step.

We’ve gotten very well versed in the federal law. And so we’re just making sure that we are doing all the things that we need to do, trying to collect all the evidence we need to collect. But no, we do not know the identification of the people who shot Alex Pretti.

AL: I also just want to mention for our listeners that with the law enforcement killings of Good and Pretti, nine people have died so far this year — either ICE shot them, or in Pretti’s case Border Patrol, or they died in ICE custody.

MM: The BCA is actually doing another use-of-force investigation because a man was shot in the leg on January 14; he fortunately survived. But that is another shooting, and that is a third investigation that the BCA is doing, and I expect they’ll submit their investigation to us for consideration of charges as well.

AL: Has there been the same sort of efforts by fed federal agents to stymie that investigation or has that been an easier —?

MM: Yes. No, same lack of cooperation or response. And the BCA had the same problem with that scene too. So it’s been very consistent, non-cooperation, and I won’t even say non-cooperation, but just blocking every attempt by the BCA to do what they’re supposed to do by law and what is best practices.

AL: There was a story that I saw in Slate that mentioned that observers on the scene — after BCA had been blocked from the Pretti shooting scene — that they saw the federal agents leave. And you’ve mentioned like they’re not investigating it, so I don’t know why they would stick around, but that was just shocking to me that they were, and if that’s accurate, that they were blocking — not shocking, but adding to the things that are frustrating about this, that they’re blocking and then they’re leaving the scene so that they’re not preserving it.

MM: Correct. People may have seen videos of people with BCA written on their jackets. They did go out there when they had the opportunity, and they did do as much as they could. But of course the best practice would be that you arrive at the scene as soon as — or shortly after it happens, and process everything there before people have gotten into the scene.

AL: Right. On Tuesday night, also in Minneapolis, someone sprayed an unidentified substance on Rep. Ilhan Omar during her first town hall of the year. What can you tell us about that incident, and is your office investigating it?

MM: So the Minneapolis Police Department is investigating it. It will be submitted to our office, I anticipate. The man who was seen on video doing that is in jail. We do have a period of time to make a decision and look at all the evidence, and I think MPD is still doing the investigation. So I think we have probably until later today or tomorrow to make a decision about whether charges are appropriate. 

And I should say: Our office prosecutes felonies in Hennepin County. (We do all youth, so juvenile, so it can be a misdemeanor, low-level crime.) If something is a misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor, a lower level crime, that is charged in the particular city where it happened. So we would be reviewing for potential felony charges.

AL: The entire premise of these raids and Trump’s attacks on Minneapolis in particular is to go after Somali immigrants, and much of that rhetoric has been directed at Somali residents in Minneapolis, including Omar herself. I wonder if you can talk about how that political rhetoric is fueling violence and the consequences here?

MM: It is. We have a very vibrant immigrant community. Many immigrants from many countries are here, including our Somali neighbors. They are mostly peaceful, just like other immigrants. 

Before all of this started, before they took down these numbers from their website, the federal government had numbers that showed that American-born citizens committed crimes at a higher rate than immigrants.

To be clear, as the prosecutor for all of Hennepin County here, first of all, there was no influx of immigrants that were coming here to commit violent crime. In fact, violent crime has gone down here. And that’s not because of ICE’s presence — that was going down, as it is around the country. So there’s no justification for ICE to be here because we have “violent crime.”

And the whole idea — at least what they claim, what they say it is — it’s about fraud. Well, this is not how you investigate fraud. Investigating fraud involves looking, I’m dating myself, I always want to say bankers boxes of documents but — 

AL: I know what that is. [Laughs]

MM: It’s really meticulous! It’s really painstaking and tedious, and you have to look through records. It isn’t snatching people off the street. So this has nothing to do with our immigrant community, and it has done tremendous damage. When you target a particular community and make ridiculous claims about what they’re doing, that can and has led to violence here against Somali neighbors.

And so it’s very damaging, and Ilhan is my representative. She has been, I think, the recipient of the worst, just terrible rhetoric, violent by the president on down. And it’s just, especially after what happened to [Minnesota state Rep.] Melissa Hortman and her husband who were assassinated, and another legislator was shot along with his family — there are consequences for the things that people say. 

There are people out there that are really struggling with mental health. We in fact have set up, and we partner with other agencies, to do threat assessments when we get people who are making threats against electeds. And a lot of these people are struggling with mental health. Some of them aren’t; some of them are radicalized, and they get the idea in their head that doing something to someone is somehow a good idea. And so there are consequences for words.

And it’s been devastating for our Somali community to have all of this hatred directed at them. And, Ilhan, I see her at events. We’re at the same events. She’s the last one there talking to her constituents. She has more public town halls than anyone I’ve ever seen. She has more public town halls than anyone in the state. She’s courageous to show up. She’s always there to talk to her constituents, and obviously what happened last night is extremely alarming. I’m grateful that she is OK. And we have, I think, reports that the substance was not toxic. So that’s good.

But the violent rhetoric, the lies, I would say, just has to stop. I know it isn’t going to, but I want people to know it has consequences and sometimes those are very violent consequences.

AL: Thank you also for mentioning the assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman.

I also want to mention this is — aside from the political violence that we’re talking about — that shooting was carried out by someone who was posing as a police officer, in the midst of this situation where as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a recent interview, local law enforcement are being overwhelmed by thousands of these immigration agents who are not clearly identified. They’re not wearing badges, and people don’t know who they are. And so that contributes to the sense of not knowing who is protecting you, right?

MM: Yes. It’s frightening. And there, I think, will be legislation in our session, which starts next month about creating greater laws to penalize people who impersonate police officers.

It is frightening. All of the ICE presence, most of them are masked. And so do you know who this person is when they’re giving you commands? It’s hard to describe how frightening it is here, how much this dominates everybody’s existence right now.

I know of no parent who hasn’t had to have some kind of conversation with their child — and I’m talking about 4, 5, 6, and older — because that child is frightened that ICE is going to hurt them or hurt their family or hurt their classmate. ICE is sending brochures into schools promising families that are having food security problems access to food. They’re doing that in schools. 

And we’ve all seen the videos of the Hmong gentlemen, elder gentlemen. And by the way, the Hmong — I think we have the second highest population of Hmong in the country — but for those who don’t know, they fought for the United States in the war in Laos. And so they are here because they were going to be killed and persecuted in Laos. So they helped us, they’re here. 

And yet we have situations where we had this Hmong elderly gentleman who was marched out of his house. And just noticing it’s 5 degrees here today. 5. And that’s been the consistent temperature in January. So they marched this gentleman out in his boxers and Crocs, and his family was able to throw a blanket around his shoulders.

They drove him around for an hour and evidently dropped him back off. He is a citizen. And he has no record. They mistook him for somebody who’s actually in one of our prisons, and the prison had notified ICE that the man was in prison. 

And we all have seen the boy, the precious boy, with the bunny hat. His father was here seeking asylum. And so he jumped through all of the legal hoops that he was supposed to, relying on our government, doing what he was supposed to do. Then they swoop in, and they snatch his 5-year-old boy and him. And I think they sent them to Texas.

And they use this word like, “detain,” which sounds pretty antiseptic, right? We’re talking about a cage. We’re talking about a jail, a prison — for a 5-year-old child. And to have the administration say, “Well, he is in better hands.” And who would want their 5-year-old child in the hands of ICE and then in a cage or a jail?

And we’ve seen these incidents over and over where I don’t know if you saw the video that came out recently. This was actually after there were some hopes here, I guess, that the ICE presence would diminish. But that same day we see videos of an ICE agent saying to somebody, “If you raise your voice, I will erase your voice.” 

Unknown agent: I will tell you this, brother, 

Unknown man: What? 

Unknown agent: I will tell you this: You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.

Unknown man: If I raise my voice, you’ll erase my voice?

Unknown agent: Exactly. 

Unknown man: Are you serious? You said, if I raise my voice, you’ll erase my voice?

Unknown agent: Yeah. 

MM: We saw another video that same day of a woman sobbing, and she has a small child in her arms, because ICE is hauling away someone in her family. We see these, and it’s like the administration says, don’t believe your eyes.

But everybody can see the videos here, and we can see what’s going on. And this isn’t about public safety. And I could go on and on about how what’s happening is really preventing our office from prosecuting people. But I’ll stop.

AL: No, actually, I’m curious what you have to say about how this is stymieing being able to actually investigate things. But secondarily, is law enforcement and your office equipped to handle these forms of violence fueled by political rhetoric, especially when it’s coming straight from the top?

MM: You know, for our office, we’re reactive in many ways, right?

AL: Yeah.

MM: We try to be proactive in prevention, but that’s very difficult here. And so we are often reactive. I think, I have reflected a lot on the role of local law enforcement here. I’ve had conversations — we have something like 38 different jurisdictions here in Hennepin County, and I have talked to them. I’ve sent them an email. And I’ve made it clear to them that they do have jurisdiction to do investigations just like they normally would, and they should submit potential cases to us. And some of the things I hear are, “What about sovereign immunity?” and that kind of thing. And we have said repeatedly, “That’s legal stuff. Let us deal with that.”

But I’ll just say that we haven’t had a single case referred to us by local law enforcement this entire time. And I think that there’s a role there — and I acknowledge that we’re in unprecedented times — but that, I think, there’s a role that local law enforcement should be playing here.

I know there have been discussions about, well, we don’t want to get into it with federal law enforcement. And at the same time I’m listening to the interview that’s come out of the woman — people are calling her the woman in the pink coat — who is videotaping what happened to Alex Pretti, and she’s talking about how frightened she was, how frightened everybody is, but they feel compelled to bear witness and be there.

And so I have tried to challenge our local law enforcement: You know, you’re here to protect and serve. Sometimes they’ve said, well, we don’t want to be political. And I’ve said, this isn’t about politics. You can think it’s a good thing that ICE is here. What we’re talking about is if members of your community are being — if excessive use of force is being inflicted upon them, what are you going to do? Are you going to investigate?

And sure, blockades there, you may not know who the agent is. And I’ve also heard fear on the part of police that they may get arrested for obstruction or worse. But I think we’re at the point where they need to make some decisions: Are they here to protect and serve the community? And that means their community members. Even if that means intervening when they see ICE engaging in unlawful behavior and doing investigations and submitting cases to us.

I can’t help but think having been living with this since the federal agents have been here, if they thought there would be accountability, if that would end some of the behavior, if that would deter some of the behavior, because I know the administration has said, “You have absolute immunity. Nobody can do anything to you.” And that is simply not the case. 

But we haven’t gotten to the point where there has been accountability for any of the behavior that we’ve seen. And I continue to encourage local law enforcement to intervene, to investigate, to send us cases, even if they’re not sure what it is. But to this point, we haven’t received a case.

[Break]

AL: There is a dynamic here that I want to touch on and that I’ve covered, with respect to your office, which is that both local and federal law enforcement and Republican officials have targeted you throughout your time in office, in part for your reform policies, but also in response to you charging a police officer in 2024 for killing a driver, Ricky Cobb II. How is that playing out here? Is that dynamic generally? Is that affecting any of the efforts on behalf of your office or these other Minnesota law enforcement agencies to respond to these two killings?

MM: No, it isn’t, and I think I will have plenty to say about the way I would say Renee Good and Ricky Cobb situations have been approached by many — very differently at some point — perhaps when I’m out of office.

And I said this when I campaigned and I’m very proud of this: I have not let politics enter into any of our decisions. We charged the officer who shot and killed Ricky Cobb because we very much believed we had a case — a good case — and we knew it would be difficult, but we thought it was appropriate to attempt to hold the state trooper accountable.

There were a lot of politics involved there. But ultimately, we ended up dismissing. And I know sometimes it’s reported that I got pressure from the governor. We dismissed it because it was the ethical thing to do. Certainly the governor at some point was threatening — was, I guess, going to take it away from us, I can only guess for the purpose of dismissing it. 

But I’m pretty immune to political pressure because I very much believe — I fundamentally believe — that a person in this situation, when we’re talking about prosecution and justice, I mean, we do things that matter, that matter to people’s lives. That goes for law enforcement and community members. And I think it’s extremely important that we not be swayed by politics, that we do the best we can and we make the right decision. And I continue to believe that we made the right decision in charging the trooper, [Ryan] Londregan, in Ricky Cobb’s death. We made the right decision to dismiss it when there were many complications with the lack of cooperation by law enforcement in that case. 

And we are going to do the right thing in this case. We’re collecting all of the evidence so we can make sure we’re making a decision with as much as we can possibly get, and then we will sit down and see, is it appropriate to charge or not?

AL: Speaking of politics, getting involved in things — the Department of Justice is also investigating your office. My understanding is that there are multiple probes going on, one of which is unrelated to ICE, but related to your office’s policies to address racial disparities in charging. The other came as a result of your role in the Good and Pretti cases. Can you walk us through that?

MM: Sure. I’ll talk about the subpoenas because there’s been a lot on those. That subpoena actually was not served on me. It was served on Hennepin County. As the county attorney, we have a civil division here as well as a criminal division. Our civil division represents Hennepin County.

So we advise, my office advises the county on that subpoena. I don’t even think it was necessarily the people that got subpoenaed, but they were — I’ve seen some of the other subpoenas — they’re looking for records about immigration. But I view those efforts as just being attempts at intimidation.

What I’ll say about that is, I was actually in a meeting about the Renee Good case, when suddenly I was inundated with texts from reporters asking me about being subpoenaed, and I had no idea what they were talking about. So it seemed that the administration was leaking that I personally had been subpoenaed.

And then we found out I actually wasn’t. It was Hennepin County, and my office does represent Hennepin County. But that’s, I think, another intimidation tactic. You can’t even be honest about what you’re actually doing.  

And why on earth would you be claiming that you’re subpoenaing me and the attorney general and others when we are investigating this case, or we were, just that case at the time. So I think it’s pretty clear that it’s politically motivated. I also learned about the DOJ investigation via Twitter. I guess I’ll still call it Twitter. 

AL: I do, too. [Laughs]

MM: And that’s ongoing. I can’t talk about that, but yeah, Minnesota has been under constant attack by this administration. That’s been clear for quite some time.

AL: After a call with Trump on Monday, Governor Tim Walz said Trump “agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.” I want to ask you, what does a more coordinated fashion look like given that per Minnesota officials, they’ve already been doing their statutory requirements as far as transferring legitimate cases to immigration?

MM: Well, first of all, I don’t believe anything until I see it with my own eyes. And the same day that happened, or the day after that happened, we saw this ICE agent telling somebody, if they raise their voice, he will erase their voice.

So we’ve seen no change here on the ground. So immigration, as you know, is civil. The law does not require the state to participate in federal civil enforcement. But that’s what this administration wants. 

Now, there are good reasons not to do that. And you’ll hear a lot of law enforcement talk about how what a bad idea it is for local law enforcement to be participating in civil enforcement of immigration law because that means that victims of crime — who are often immigrants because they get targeted — will never call you, will never call the police. They won’t be witnesses for our cases. If they’re domestic violence victims, they won’t call. So there are very good policy reasons and practical reasons — you want trust in the community for local law enforcement to not participate in something you are not, you don’t have to participate in, because it’s civil.

And Minnesota has, as you said, has been doing its statutory responsibility, but they want more than that. And this continual refrain of violent criminals is ridiculous. If an immigrant commits a crime, if law enforcement brings us a case, they’re held accountable. And then typically what’s happened is that ICE decides, if they go to prison, do they want to deport them after that. That’s the way it’s always worked. It’s not been a problem here.

Like, how is this about violent criminals when — and I haven’t looked at this for a while, but at one point, given the administration’s own numbers — over half of the people that they have detained have no criminal record. It’s not about violent criminals. So it seems as though the administration wants information that legally the state is not required to give. And if handing that information over actually hurts public safety, so I don’t see, hopefully, the state switching positions on that. 

It always has been a political question, but I think the question is, is it starting to look so bad for Republicans in this administration that for political reasons, they’ll stop doing this or withdraw? I think that’s what it comes down to. I mean, I thought I heard Trump saying in Iowa that this is just bad for us, not for him. 

Every day we hear something new. And so as I said, and I think Minnesotans believe this too: We will believe it when we see it here on the ground.

AL: I’ll just mention, what the administration wants local police to do in terms of doing immigration enforcement is part of this massive increase in 287g agreements that the administration has been signing with local police departments and state departments around the country.

Minnesota has eight of them, none of which are in Hennepin County. But I read into that statement that they would be potentially trying to push more of those agreements. I don’t know if you’re hearing anything to that effect.

MM: I think they have. I cannot remember what community it was in, but they were trying to push some kind of facility on a community. And community members showed up and said no. And I think it’s very unlikely that community here in Minnesota, after what they’ve seen, would voluntarily want to do that anyway. The reason I think communities do that, or different counties do it, is to raise money. They get money from ICE by housing people.

And so that’s not something that Hennepin County is ever going to do. And I’m sure it’s not something other counties are going to do, but they do need places to house all of these people they are picking up, even though they have no records.

And I should tell people too, we have restaurants closing because there’s no one to work there. We have abandoned cars that are still going in the middle of the street because somebody’s been dragged out of it and taken away. This has been devastating to the community. And at the same time, Minnesotans know how to protect one another. That is why they’re showing up in droves.

That is why they showed up on the Friday with the march. I’ve heard everything from upward of 15,000 to 50,000 people showed up. I think that day was below zero. The temperature was below zero. Minnesotans care about their neighbors. They’re delivering meals to people. They are there and they do not approve of the fact that their federal government is attacking them and their neighbors. And they are resisting in pretty remarkable but probably not surprising ways.

AL: We’re going to leave it there. Thank you for joining me on the Intercept Briefing, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, 

MM: Of course. 

AL: This was a great conversation. Really appreciate your time. 

MM: Thank you.

AL: All eyes are on Minnesota. But ICE is continuing to sweep cities around the country, expanding its efforts most recently in Maine. Elected officials are warning that however the courts respond to what they describe as extreme and dangerous federal overreach in Minnesota could portend what’s next for other cities. In a letter supporting the lawsuit brought by Minnesota officials including Moriarty, who we just heard from, against DHS, 20 attorneys general wrote: “If left unchecked, the federal government will no doubt be emboldened to continue its unlawful conduct in Minnesota and to repeat it elsewhere.” 

Next, we’ll hear from someone who has been preparing communities for just that. Jill Garvey is the executive director of States at the Core, an organization that leads and runs ICE Watch training programs. Welcome to the show, Jill. 

Jill Garvey: Thanks for having me.

AL: Over the last few weeks, concerns about safety have hit a high point after immigration agents killed observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. How are you talking to people about being safe when observing and documenting agents activities, particularly when law enforcement is blatantly breaking the law?

JG: When we talk to people and we train people to be observers or to document what’s happening in their communities, we really focus on three things. One is documentation, how important it is to have as much footage as possible, as much evidence as possible about what is happening, but to do it as safely as possible.

So it’s a core piece of the training that thousands of people are getting right now and are joining, essentially. We find thousands of people from all over the country every week are doing what we call ICE Watch training or documentation training. What we find is that people are scared for their safety, but that they are resolved to do this anyway.

And so we talk a lot about maintaining a safe distance, maintaining nonviolence, not interfering, not getting between an agent and their target — because that’s not just dangerous for the observer, but it’s dangerous for the people directly being targeted and other potential vulnerable people in the area.

But we also talk about doing this in community. The beating heart of what we are seeing happen in cities and people getting prepared is their sense of community. So this isn’t an individual activity. If you do it together, you are much safer and it is much more effective.

AL: And the idea being that if you’re in community that disincentivizes agents from retaliating? Or can you tell us more about how that strengthens?

JG: I think it’s a few things. One is the more people, the more eyes on the scene, whatever the operation or activity is, the more people watching, the less likely that there will be an escalation of violence. What we see most of the time is that ICE agents or Border Patrol agents don’t want to be filmed. They don’t want to be documented, and they certainly don’t want a crowd of people watching them even from a safe distance. 

A lot of the footage that people around the country have seen have been these sort of violent confrontations or clashes in certain cities, and so those do develop, but it is typically after ICE agents have already escalated some aggression against a community member.

Maybe they are targeting children for arrest or detention. Maybe they are smashing somebody’s window and trying to take them out of a vehicle. More often than not, having more people on the scene means that ICE agents pull out of that neighborhood and try to find a place that is quieter.

We also know that we can’t stop all this aggression. The aggression is the point of these operations. So we can’t guarantee that people aren’t going to be targeted with violent actions from federal law enforcement. What we can say is, if you’re doing this in community, other people are going to be watching.

We wouldn’t know what really happened to Renee, we wouldn’t really know what happened to Alex Pretti if their neighbors hadn’t been bravely recording these incidences all the way through.

AL: And you’re talking about documentation, it sounds like mostly video recording, audio recording. Are there other forms of documentation that you’re training people on, or can you tell us more about exactly how people are documenting these instances?

JG: Primarily it is video documentation with their phones. One thing that we talk about that I think is a surprise to people is how much we want them to narrate or create some audio documentation while they are using video. So what we find in this new wave of ICE enforcement and it being documented by residents, is that people are often taking videos, or at least a couple months ago in Chicago and some other cities — people were taking videos, and it was really hard to tell what was going on just from the visual. So increasingly people are learning that they take the videos, but they also calmly narrate everything that they’re seeing just in case, their hands are shaking and the camera’s kind of migrating over here, but they’re seeing something really important, right?

So that audio, that eyewitness accounting of what is happening is also really important.

AL: Can you tell us what you’ve learned from the people in the communities participating in these trainings?

JG: So I think what I’ve learned is that this is a multigenerational pretty broad spectrum of people who are getting engaged and going out there and doing this. So we’re hearing from people who are young, we’re hearing from people who are old. We have people who join our trainings who say, “I’m 83. How do I do this safely and effectively?” We hear from a lot of people in rural and more remote areas and we hear from people who have not previously been involved in any sort of protest or political activity.

The reason they’re coming to these trainings and the reason they’re going out with their cellphones and whistles in some places is because they’re having some, I think, base reaction that is transcending typical politics to what they’re seeing and what they understand the threat is.

We hear a lot of people talking to us about how they understand the threat from the administration or from DHS on their neighbors and on their communities. And it’s really much more rooted in an understanding that they think their freedoms are under threat, even if they are not an immigrant or even if they don’t really have deep ties to immigrant communities, that this really matters to them and it really bothers them. So we hear a lot from folks who just haven’t been engaged previously. But this for all those reasons is enough for them to step up.

AL: On the right, some people, including the administration, claim that the individuals and the communities participating in these kinds of activities and protests are — they accuse them of being paid agitators or astro-turf groups. What do you say to that?

JG: I think the numbers don’t really support that. The numbers don’t lie. Even if you look at the footage, at the number of neighbors, residents who come out of their homes prepared to document what they’re seeing in lots of places, Charlotte, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans; Chicago; LA; D.C. It’s not possible that there’s that many paid agitators.

I also think it’s just another part of the propaganda machine, right? They need an explanation for why they’re losing. And they need an explanation to pull people off the the sense that “Hey, this isn’t really about immigration. This is about authoritarian overreach. This is about militarizing certain cities that are political opponents or where democracy thrives.”

It’s a weak argument that there’s some major sophistication happening behind the scenes. I assure you there is not. 

AL: [Laughs]

JG: [Laughs] This is a very basic training that we’re providing and that most other people are providing to folks rooted in how to be a good neighbor, frankly. How to assert your rights, how to protect your neighbor’s rights. So I think it’s a little bit laughable. I also think it’s a little bit desperate.

AL: Speaking of authoritarian overreach, Trump invoked the Insurrection Act once again after an ICE officer killed Renee Good. What would happen if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act yet again? Would your advice change? If so, how are you all talking about this?

JG: I don’t think our advice really changes other than for those people who live in places where the Insurrection Act could be invoked, understanding what that actually means. This is a pretty vague thing to invoke, or to enact, activate. So I do think it’s people really understanding what it means. Does it mean that local law enforcement, local governance is disempowered in some ways? Yes, and that should be a concern for folks. But it doesn’t strip you of your rights. Doesn’t strip you of your First Amendment rights or your Fourth Amendment rights.

AL: Were you doing these trainings prior to January of 2025, and what the timeline is there? 

JG: So my organization, in partnership with some community defense networks in Chicago, started training more robustly in January 2025. 

AL: OK, got it. 

JG: But there’s roots in this training all the way back to 2017 when various groups started adapting other documentation training, and know-your-rights training into what a lot of people now refer to as ICE Watch or Migra Watch. But I think we saw a big uptick in interest from across the country in July of 2025. For various reasons, people started to get very concerned — and now, in hindsight, very good reason — that the Trump administration was really going to operationalize this playbook around surging immigration enforcement officers into certain places. 

We had probably 100 people per training in the beginning, and now, like tonight, we have 7,000 people registered for training. 

AL: Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about that you think is important for people to know on these topics?

JG: So the recent news is that Bovino has been demoted, and his sort of brand is being dismantled. But he’s not a decision maker. He’s not the architect of these strategies. So until we get to a point where Kristi Noem or Corey Lewandowski or Stephen Miller are really held to account for what they are doing in American cities people should be staying as vigilant as possible. Keep training, keep organizing their communities to respond when they come to Ohio or Pennsylvania or other states and cities.

AL: Many Democrats and even some Republicans now are calling on Kristi Noem to be impeached and all this stuff, and it’s the lowest-hanging fruit here obviously for people. They can take Bovino out of Minneapolis, but they’re just going to go on to the next city and continue doing the same thing with whoever they put in place next. So I think that’s an important and fitting note for us to end on.

Thank you so much for joining us on The Intercept Briefing, Jill Garvey,

JG: Thank you for having me.

AL: That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

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Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.