Schmitt calls Minneapolis federal agent shooting a choice. He’s right, kind of | Opinion
When Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri finally spoke up about the horrific shooting death of Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, the statement was oddly muted.
Tepid, even.
“The crisis in Minneapolis is a choice,” Schmitt said late Saturday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the killing.
The left “has decided escalating anarchy serves their political interests,” Schmitt said. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he concluded, “must stop the war on law enforcement.”
Give Schmitt this: He’s usually a vigorous defender of the Trump administration, no matter what. But unlike Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, Schmitt didn’t falsely — scurrilously — portray Pretti as a domestic terrorist or border agents as the real victims of the encounter.
And when Schmitt is right, he’s right. The crisis in Minneapolis really is a choice.
But it’s a choice made by a Trump administration that has flooded the city with thousands of federal agents who have mistakenly arrested American citizens, used racial profiling to make stops and cavalierly — even violently — disregarded the First Amendment rights of Minneapolis residents.
The feds have overreached, badly. Even President Donald Trump seems to suddenly understand that. It’s the kind of thing Schmitt used to be against.
Federal chaos in Minnesota
Let’s first focus on the overreach.
It’s an odd thing to charge that there’s a “war on law enforcement,” as Schmitt did, when it is Minneapolis civilians who are suffering all the casualties. Renee Good — the former Kansas City resident killed earlier this month — and Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs nurse, are dead as a result of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
A very short, incomplete list of other highlights from Trump’s Minneapolis immigration crackdown:
- Masked immigration agents dragged ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record, out of his home in his underwear and Crocs and through the snow to a car where he was held for an hour before they released him without an apology.
- Agents have detained a 5-year-old boy in a Spider-Man backpack, detained a man outside his home for the possible crime of having an accent, pepper-sprayed another man directly in the face after he was already pinned down and shattered the car window of a Minneapolis resident tracking Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ activities.
People don’t like this stuff.
But federal officials on the scene have also made clear they are not willing to put up with the admittedly harsh but constitutionally protected insults that Minnesotans fling their way.
“Calling law enforcement names like ‘Gestapo’ or using the term ‘kidnapping’” to describe the federal crackdown is wrong, Bovino said over the weekend. “That is a choice that is made. There are actions and consequences that come from those choices.”
Trump promised “RECKONING & RETRIBUTION” when he sent agents into Minneapolis. The result has naturally been chaos, death and threats of repression. Thousands of Minnesotans didn’t peacefully protest against ICE in freezing weather on Friday because they feel safer or more free.
So who, really, is choosing “anarchy” here?
Schmitt: then and now
Schmitt, back when he was Missouri’s attorney general, was once against big government overreach — at least where federal gun laws are concerned.
“We will not stand by while the federal government tries to tell Missourians how to live our lives,” he said back in 2021.
Schmitt doesn’t believe in “sanctuary cities,” you see, unless they’re to protect firearms.
That might also be why the senator’s Sunday statement was so delayed and so muted. Pretti was legally carrying a gun when agents killed him — crucially, the video evidence shows he had a phone in hand during the encounter, not the firearm — and some Trump administration allies have suggested Pretti more or less invited his own death as a result.
“I don’t know of any peaceful protesters that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.
That has never, ever been the view of the National Rifle Association or right-wing allies like Schmitt. Which might be why conservative firebrands such as Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged the president to “recalibrate” the Minnesota mission following Pretti’s death.
There are ways to do immigration enforcement “without causing all the kinds of problems and fighting in communities that they are experiencing right now,” Abbott said.
Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to be listening. On Monday he said he would send “border czar” Tom Homan to Minneapolis, and even suggested he was trying to “work together” with Walz on immigration issues.
If that helps prevent more violence, great.
But Trump’s moves are also an implicit acknowledgement that the federal government — and not just “the left” — has a role to play in turning down the temperature. Schmitt was right: The crisis is a choice. So is ending it.
