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Man Shot and Killed by Fed Agents in Minneapolis, DHS Says Man Was Armed; Interview with Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA); Interview with Minneapolis City Council Member Aisha Chughtai; Interview with Former Acting ICE Director John Sandweg. Aired 9-10p ET

Aired January 24, 2026 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:00:51]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Erin Burnett in New York.

As we are following the breaking news tonight in Minneapolis, we have a photo now of the man who was shot and killed by federal agents there today. And we are also hearing from his family now for the first time.

They are telling us his name. He is Alex Pretti, 37 years old, an ICU nurse who worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital.

We're going to show you now a new angle of the shooting just obtained by CNN. We will warn you, of course, in all of these, because a human being was killed. It is disturbing to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED) is wrong with you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ok.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED) people. What is wrong with you? Honestly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Homeland Security says that the agents acted in self-defense. They put out this image of the gun that Alex was carrying. They said it was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic. And they made a point of saying, look at the extra magazines.

Of course, he did not fire it, and it was taken away from him, as we can see in the videos that we have shown you. It was removed from Alex Pretti before any shots were fired. And there is no evidence at any point that he pulled it out with any intention of using it on the videos that have seen thus far.

Pretti's family says in a statement that they are heartbroken. They say, quote, "The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs.

He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you."

That is the latest statement that we have from Alex Pretti's grieving family.

Tom Foreman is here to walk us through what we're hearing from federal officials now, which is, of course, very different from the video, but specifically this new video that just over one minute version, Tom, that I just played, that really shows the lead up.

It shows Mr. Pretti jumping in to try to protect a woman that ICE appeared to be -- trying to detain in some way, perhaps. And then the whole incident happens.

So, the two versions of what they say and what we see don't match.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And Erin, this is to me, of all the videos we've seen today, one of the most complete ones where you can kind of see the flow of everything.

What we've heard throughout the day from the Trump administration has been almost completely contradicted by these new videos reviewed by CNN.

Let's start with the very first statement the Department of Homeland Security made just hours after Alex was shot and killed by federal agents.

DHS posted this photo of a handgun placed on what appears to be the seat of a car, and wrote in part, "An individual approached U.S. border patrol officers with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun seen here.

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

In a series of tweets just a short time later, top White House aide Stephen Miller referred to Pretti as a domestic terrorist and a would- be assassin.

[21:04:51]

FOREMAN: Now, keep these statements from DHS and the White House in mind as we walk through this new video cleared by CNN. And as you noted earlier, Erin, it's a disturbing video. So don't watch if you don't want to.

But if you watch it very closely, you can see Pretti here with the cell phone in his right hand. He'll come stepping in here in a moment, you will see him as he moves out.

That's him coming in on the left, and then he moves out in the middle. He's motioning for cars to come by and he's shooting video with his phone, Right.

And he briefed -- the phone briefly points to the ground here. And when it comes back up, you start seeing what's happening here.

Agents are starting to engage with him and a couple of women nearby. One of them, now you see them coming up, one of them very forcefully pushes one of these women to the ground near him. And Pretti is then in the position of going over toward her.

Remember, he's in ICE -- well, we've gone back to the beginning of this, but it moves forward here -- and this woman gets pushed to the ground and Pretti is over there, from all appearances trying to help her while they're both getting pepper sprayed.

Remember, he's an ICU nurse. He would have some knowledge of this, theoretically. There's no sign that he is trying to go at the agents or grapple with the agents. He seems to be trying to help this woman out instead.

What you can see is him backing away from the agents when one of the agents shoves him, and then he's down on the ground.

Now let's go back to the first video that I showed you. At this point, I know it's a little confusing here, but look at this. At this point, the person filming angles the phone toward Pretti again. There you go. The woman's down. He's over there trying to help her. The spray is flying.

And then the agents grab him and they drag him away from the woman whom he is trying to help. And now he is down on the ground and the agents are around him. As you can see, there are several of them there. I'd have to count them again.

But they have him down on the ground and watch that one on the far side over there in the middle. He suddenly stands up and turns his back and starts moving away. That's going to be important a little bit later on, because that's when the shooting happens.

One shot followed by, by our count, nine other shots here. Now we pause all this. And I want to play for you what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTI NOEM, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: In these videos, Pretti does not have a visible firearm, though, so reporters asked the head of border patrol at what point he brandished a weapon and this was his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY BOVINO, U.S. BORDER PATROL COMMANDER-AT-LARGE: Ali, this this situation again, is evolving. This situation is under investigation. Those facts will come to light.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Greg Bovino obviously didn't really answer that question, but this is an important detail because concealed carry is legal and we know Pretti had a permit to do so, local officials told us this.

Law enforcement analysts here on CNN have raised questions as to why the picture of this gun was shared online from DHS on the seat of a car, and not at the scene where Pretti was shot. A question about investigative process there.

Now we have an answer, though. CNN analysis shows that man I mentioned earlier in the middle, you see him moving away there. It shows he is moving away with absolutely what appears to be a gun in his hand. And this is critical.

Yes, it's a short time frame, but that image is being taken roughly a second before the shots occur. Now, maybe it's a little bit less than a second. Yes, that's a very close time frame. But the point is there was no threat if that gun is the only threat we're talking about here.

So this is a -- no matter how you see this, whether you're on the side of the ICE agents or on the side of the protesters, or somewhere in between, all of this is the reason that there needs to be, in the eyes of many people, an independent, thorough investigation, not simply people announcing up front that the agents were right and this man was wrong.

BURNETT: That's right. Absolutely. Tom Foreman, thank you.

FOREMAN: You're welcome.

BURNETT: And let's go to Whitney Wild at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. That's where ICE has been staging operations at the center of all of this.

And Whitney, what have you been seeing there in these hours after the shooting?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've seen about a dozen or so protesters here, Erin. It is extremely quiet.

The scene here is very different from what we've seen at the Whipple Building in the past. This is where we've seen clashes with protesters and law enforcement, where protesters were able to get pretty close to some of the entrances at that federal building.

This federal building is home to multiple federal law enforcement agencies. This is also where -- this is really the epicenter of that immigration

crackdown. There's an immigration court here. So again, we've seen multiple clashes between protesters and federal law enforcement here in the past.

[21:09:47]

WILD: Tonight, it is very quiet. There are, as I said, about a dozen or so protesters here. The perimeter of this building is completely different. It is a fortress now.

There are concrete barriers all the way around the building for the most part. There are fences several feet high in the air.

There is multiple law enforcement presence around the building, but we are not seeing actual law enforcement boots on the ground. We're seeing people in their cars. So it's not that shoulder to shoulder presence that we've seen in the past.

Again, here it is very quiet. But what is notable here, Erin, is that it appears there is a National Guard presence now. So if you look over my shoulder here, you see what appears to be multiple National Guard vehicles. They are peppered around this federal building.

And then, Erin, what we know is that Governor Walz has mobilized the National Guard. This is something that he has talked about for several days.

We now know that the National Guard is activated. That is in some part at the behest of Minneapolis officials who say after all of these protests, multiple shootings, Minneapolis police, local law enforcement from surrounding agencies are tired. They have been out with these protesters over and over and over in subzero weather. Now it is time to bring in additional resources.

So there is mutual aid from surrounding law enforcement agencies that are likely to be brought in. And we now know again, that the National Guard has been mobilized, Erin.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Whitney Wild.

And let's go now to our senior law enforcement analyst, Andrew McCabe. Also the former deputy director of the FBI.

So, Director McCabe, what do you see in all of this so far from the information that we have, from the videos you've watched, from the responses we've gotten from DHS and from Mr. Bovino?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I mean, obviously, Erin, at the core of it, you have an unbelievable tragedy where it appears that a potentially unarmed person was essentially assassinated by horrible law enforcement tactics that dramatically escalated this situation.

But, you know, there just -- there are so many questions here. At the -- at the absolute core of lethal force training in the FBI Academy at in the academy at Glynco, Georgia, where DHS agents, ICE agents, border patrol folks go through, you are taught from the very beginning that if you are in -- if you use your weapon, you have to be able to, after the fact, articulate exactly why you perceived an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

And so the question now is, when are we going to hear that articulation? What is the reason that these officers or a single officer, we don't know how many people shot, believed they were in imminent threat of death by this person who was by all -- every video we've seen -- on the ground with anywhere from four to give officers on top of him at the same time. Nowhere in these videos do you see a weapon in this man's hand.

And so while Commander Bovino's statement was very artfully written, yes, they encountered someone who had a gun, it is not clear that that man ever presented the gun, brandished the gun, pointed the gun at anyone, threatened to, you know, to harm any of these officers.

So what's the excuse for having to use lethal force here? We have no idea.

BURNETT: No. And in fact, you know, they were quick to post a picture of the gun which they removed from the crime scene. They put in a car. They said, look at these extra magazines. There was some deplorable act that he was prepared to commit.

But they've never actually even said that he did brandish it. And obviously there's no video evidence that he did any such thing. He did have a permit to carry it. He was clearly there.

We hear all the whistles on that one video, right? The whistles people do when they're warning of ICE. He was there trying to protect, it appears, a woman that they -- that they pushed over.

So, Director McCabe, I'm just curious, though, if there is no investigation, which at this point doesn't appear that they're going to be any indications they are, they're saying case closed and sealed, right.

And they don't give access to the state for an investigation, which again, that would be surprising if they did. They didn't do it with Renee Nicole Good. Then what happens here?

MCCABE: Nothing. Nothing happens here. Just like nothing happened after the killing of Renee Good, you know?

In fact, so what we have seen, Erin, is a very -- now we have a very common set of circumstances. We know what the -- we know what the game plan is for the White House and DHS.

Immediately after the event, they go to the media and they put out a version of events that paints the victim as a domestic terrorist.

[21:14:43]

MCCABE: It happened to Renee Good. They then said Renee Good's wife was also a domestic terrorist, which, of course, neither of them are. And now immediately they say the same thing about this man.

And there's -- so that's absolutely contrary to any effort to stage a legitimate investigation. You would never have high ranking officials from the agency involved going out to the public, prejudging it. But that's what's happened in every one of these cases.

In the Renee Good case, you actually had the deputy attorney general of the United States of America came out on social media, what, a day after the event and said there will be no investigation. There was no wrongdoing. There's nothing -- nothing to investigate here. Essentially offered him a pardon from any accountability for this.

And I can tell you that the other officers on the ground in Minneapolis, in Maine, in Chicago, wherever they may be deployed, they hear this loud and clear. And the signal they get is do whatever you want. There will be no accountability.

You can be as violent as you want. You can provoke as many conflicts as you want -- as we've seen happen in this case. And there will be no accountability.

And people should be very, very concerned about that. Any time there's a law enforcement shooting of any type, there should be a fair, unbiased investigation. That is not happening here.

BURNETT: Well, I mean, I think on the basis of it, too, when you talk about the lack of training and professionalism that may have been on display here, when you're surrounded by that many people, right? I mean, when regular people get put into a scrum, you can understand all of the not knowing what's going on, right? But these aren't regular people. These are supposed to be trained law enforcement who know exactly what they're doing in situations like this, right. But that's not what we saw. So, you know --

MCCABE: Not at all.

BURNETT: Yes. So then I mean, is it possible then that we would -- look in the case of Renee Nicole Good, we know the name of the individual who shot her. We know they chose not to do an investigation to find out exactly what happened, right. But we know.

But in this case, we may never actually even know, because it's unclear in that scrum who shot or how many people shot. The only thing we know for sure is that Alex Pretti, who was killed, was not one of the people who shot.

MCCABE: That's absolutely right. And there's no indication that we'll ever get to the bottom of this because, you know, as I've said, the administration has proven in all prior events that they are perfectly comfortable going out and deliberately misleading the public as to what's happening on the ground in Minneapolis, convicting people for domestic terrorism before they've ever been presented a single piece of evidence.

How about the photograph of Nekima Anderson, who the White House admitted they intentionally altered the photograph to make her look worse at the moment of her arrest?

(CROSSTALKING)

MCCABE: It's unbelievable. We've never seen this from any other administration that I'm familiar with at any other time in our history. We've never seen this level of violent conduct by law enforcement against the citizenry be completely ignored and swept under -- swept under the rug by the administration.

It should be troubling to every American, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. You should not be comfortable watching public servants act like this and commit these acts of violence and suffer no repercussion for it.

BURNETT: Director McCabe, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

And so much more to come on the breaking news out of Minneapolis on this Saturday night. We'll be speaking with Congressman Seth Moulton after this.

[21:18:17]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Back now with the breaking news out of Minneapolis, a city on edge after another deadly shooting involving federal agents amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in that city.

37-year-old Alex Pretti shot and killed during an altercation where he was moving it appears to protect a woman that ICE was perhaps seeking to detain. His family has identified him as Alex Pretti. He's 37 years old, as I said, an ICU nurse who worked at a VA hospital.

Homeland Security says the agents acted in self-defense after the man approached them with a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun.

It is important to say that while there may be truth in the actual black and white of that statement, from everything that we've seen, that the gun which we understand he had a permit to carry was not in his hands. It was on his -- somewhere else, on his body.

So it's not as if he approached them brandishing it in any way. We just don't see that on any of the videos we've seen thus far.

Joining us now, Congressman Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts.

Congressman Moulton, what have you seen in everything we've watched today?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): I've seen a bunch of federal cowards killing a brave American patriot, someone who served veterans like myself in the VA hospital, someone who was trying to protect a fellow American citizen exercising her First Amendment rights.

Someone who had every Second Amendment right to carry a weapon. Someone who was not threatening these officers -- these officers in any way.

And yet these cowards are so pathetic, Erin, so pathetic and unprofessional that, what, five or six of them couldn't even subdue him if that's what they were trying to do -- illegally, by the way. But they couldn't do that and so they had to shoot him.

The only debate here is whether this is murder or execution. That's the debate.

BURNETT: And do you think when you say whether it's murder or execution, I also will point out at this point we have no idea who even killed him, right? It was such a scrum of officers.

It appears that more than one person shot, but we don't even know. And it appears at this point we may never know. There's absolutely no indications that there will ever be an investigation.

I mean, can you get your head around that, that there wouldn't even be an investigation?

MOULTON: This is state-sponsored terror. State-sponsored terror is what we are witnessing in America's streets. This is what you expect in Iran. And you expect the leaders of Iran -- the Kristi Noems and Donald Trumps of Iran to get on and make up lies to defend their state-sponsored terror.

That's what is happening in the United States of America today. We did not see this under Bull Connor in Alabama in the 1960s. We did not see this in the worst of the assaults on civil rights protesters throughout the 50s and the 60s.

[21:24:46]

MOULTON: This is truly the worst we have ever seen of domestic terror -- state-sponsored terror in America. And people need to let that sink in. People need to let that sink in because what Trump and the MAGA warriors are doing is trying to normalize this in the same way -- in the same way as the Third Reich tried to normalize this state- sponsored violence in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany.

They're trying to normalize it, to make everyone think, oh, this is just another -- another murderer. It's not a big deal. The guy was probably doing something wrong.

No. Americans need to wake up. And my Republican colleagues in Washington need to wake up. This is Tom Emmer State. Tom Emmer -- third ranking Republican in the House. The guy who can never even count votes to figure out whether a bill will pass for the Republicans.

And he can't speak out against this? He can't stand up for his own fellow Minnesotans? I mean, what pathetic cowardice on the part of so many Americans right now.

BURNETT: So, Congressman, are any of your Republican colleagues going to be willing to do anything about it? Obviously, there's the -- you know, government funding bill this week. There are the levers that perhaps could be pulled.

Obviously, I know people, some of them will roll their eyes that I'm even asking the question because nothing has been done out of Congress in a long time on this.

But do you have any reason to believe that there -- that there is anybody, your Republican colleagues who are ready to change what they're saying?

MOULTON: It's not clear, Erin, just how many innocent Americans need to die before these Republicans find the courage to just stand up for fellow Americans and our Constitution, which the Trump administration is tearing to shreds.

But I'd say I have modest hope that a few Republicans who are retiring might actually do the right thing. No Republican who actually wants to get re-elected will probably say a peep.

You know, after the last shooting with Renee Good, another American patriot gunned down by federal agents, I was on Fox News standing up for her, standing up for the truth.

And the first person I saw after that interview was a big Trumper Republican that I served with in Congress. He came up to me, he complimented me on the interviews that I got the better of this Fox host.

And then he said, you know, I spent decades in law enforcement, and that was a really bad shot. It was not the right thing to do.

And you know what he said next? He said, but of course, I can't say that. What do you mean, you can't say that?

You don't have the basic courage, just a shred of decency to tell the truth? Why are you sent to Washington by voters in your district if you can't even tell the truth about an American citizen being gunned down in our streets?

I mean, that's just how pathetic these Trump Republicans are. That's how scared they are.

I mean, time and again, people ask me, why is Congress so broken? Why is Congress so stupid? How come we can't believe in facts or whatever else?

And the honest truth is that what's lacking in Congress isn't intelligence. And there are a few examples, but most of my colleagues are pretty smart. They just have no courage. They're just cowards in the face of this administration.

And it's time for Democrats and Republicans to stand up together and do something about this before it gets a hell of a lot worse.

BURNETT: Congressman Seth Moulton, I'm grateful for your time tonight. Thank you so much.

MOULTON: Good to see you.

BURNETT: And the Minneapolis community is mourning tonight following this shooting of Alex Pretti, 37 years old.

A city council member from the very, very spot where he was killed today, will join us after this.

[21:28:52]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: We're back with our breaking news coverage out of Minneapolis, where federal agents shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse at a local VA hospital. We don't know even which agent shot him. It was a scrum of agents.

I want to continue this conversation with Minneapolis city council member, Aisha Chughtai. And Aisha, I appreciate your time.

You know, you represent the area where the shooting took place. And I know that when this happened this morning, you know, you basically ran over there. Ok.

So what actually did you see when you got there? And then I know you've had a chance to talk to your constituents about what happened. Tell us what you're hearing.

AISHA CHUGHTAI, MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Yes. You know, this morning, after 100,000 of the Minnesotans around the twin cities gathered in downtown Minneapolis yesterday to make our voices heard and protest to get ICE out of our state.

This morning one of my neighbors, one of my constituents was murdered, was assassinated in the street by federal law enforcement agents.

When I arrived on scene, there were hundreds of ICE and border patrol agents that were indiscriminately putting their hands on residents who were just showing up to figure out what was going on, to legally observe and bear witness to the horrific events that were unfolding.

We saw ICE agents and border patrol agents indiscriminately pepper spraying and tear-gassing the area. And it is a -- it's a devastating day today here in Minneapolis.

BURNETT: So, so what do you think, Aisha? I guess I'm going to ask you will, and then, and then could and should are separate questions. But what do you think will happen next here?

[21:34:43]

CHUGHTAI: Well, I think that Minneapolis residents, you know, as angry, as devastated, as heartbroken as we are right now, our resolve and our deep and profound belief in the humanity of every single one of our neighbors is only strengthened. Our desire to continue to show up for each other and protect our, our neighbors is only strengthened. So what I can -- what I know for a fact will happen in the coming

days, weeks, months and onward is we will continue to show up for each other.

BURNETT: So the National Guard has been mobilized, we understand, and is arriving, and that has been mobilized by the governor of your state, Tim Walz. So it is not by the president to maintain law and order. It's by your governor to help support Minneapolis police, who have obviously been working around the clock.

And there's about 600 of them, and we understand about 3,000 ICE agents.

So -- but the National Guard is going to be present. Are people prepared for that? Do people welcome that?

CHUGHTAI: I think the one thing that that we want to see right now is for ICE to leave our communities. And, you know, I think that -- I think that we want our, our state and local officials, our state and local law enforcement to step up and hold to account the people who murdered Alex Pretti this morning.

And I think that's the -- that's the type of leadership we're looking for from our state leaders and our state law enforcement.

BURNETT: Aisha, thank you very much. I appreciate your time on this Saturday night of this day of tragedy in Minneapolis. Thank you.

And despite calls from state officials to pull federal troops out of Minnesota, the Trump administration has doubled down. We've got an update from the White House. We'll go there and our Kristen Holmes right after this.

[21:36:47]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: More of our breaking news coverage after today's fatal shooting in Minneapolis.

Getting some more information here from the White House. The background, of course, federal agents opened fire. This is the third time this month.

Tonight, Alex Pretti is dead. He's 37 years old. He was a nurse at a local VA hospital.

Now DHS says he was violently resisting officers, and local officials and lawmakers say the footage shows a different story. At least from what we have seen in the various videos that we have observed, it does not match what federal officials are saying.

Kristen Holmes joins us now from the White House. So Kristen, obviously, you know, we just heard again from a representative in Minneapolis, right -- city representative saying they want ICE out. We've heard that again and again and again. But there's absolutely no indication that the Trump administration is considering doing that, is there?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No. And that's what we've heard for hours now, is that President Trump is standing by this agent. He is standing by his operations.

In fact, he believes that there is a lot of positive that these immigration agents are doing, but they're just not getting the credit for it essentially, publicly. That he thinks that his people should be promoting the good things that these ICE agents are doing, because, of course, he has seen the same polling that we all have that shows that a majority of Americans don't like what they are seeing with this immigration enforcement across the country.

But again, he is not blaming the agenda itself, he is blaming the messaging around it.

Now, we heard from the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who I know is in touch with the White House all day. I was told that by sources, they had gone over the messaging around this shooting, and she blamed the victim himself. She also blamed local officials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NOEM: We don't have this problem in Texas or in Florida because those individuals in those states work with us and they make sure that they keep peace and calm while they bring criminals to justice.

In Minneapolis, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, they instead choose violence. They instead choose to encourage the destruction of their city and the crime against their people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now Erin, I think you'll find this fascinating because this is something that is coming across and it's really circulating in Republican circles right now.

And you have the NRA, the gun lobby group, essentially calling for a full investigation. They comment on a district attorney -- United States attorney who was appointed by Trump's comments about this, saying essentially that if you are approached by law enforcement with a gun, there's a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.

The NRA pushes back on this and you see this. It says, "The sentiment from the first assistant U.S. Attorney for the central district of California is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting full investigation, not making generalizations or demonizing law-abiding citizens."

Obviously, this is one group. But Erin, you know, you've covered politics for a long time. This is one of the most powerful groups. They are groups who have impacted President Trump's decision-making in the past.

Now, it's unclear, I've reached out to see if the White House has been in touch with the leadership at the NRA as this is unfolding. We obviously saw how the investigation in Renee Good shooting unfolded.

Unclear what this is going to look like, but we do know the Department of Homeland Security with the FBI is leading this search. And we have heard from local officials that they are not involved, that they were actually pushed away from the crime scene.

But again, unclear if this will move the needle. But this is an incredibly powerful group who has impacted President Trump in the past. While, of course, he continues to say he is standing by this agenda here and what this officer did.

BURNETT: Yes, it's really important that you bring that up though, Kristen, because when you think about who -- what could possibly make a move here for this administration, something from the NRA, obviously is meaningful.

All right. Kristen, thank you very much with that new reporting from the White House.

And stay with us. We've got more on the breaking news. A former head of ICE after the break.

[21:44:21]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: As we follow the breaking news from Minneapolis tonight, we've got some new video just coming in. I'm going to just explain this to you and then play it.

All right. This new video is taken from inside the car right next to the incident. So right in front, you're going to be inside the car right through the dashboard. You're going to watch the entire incident play out.

This one is extremely disturbing. They're very, very close to where the shots start. But you'll see it all. You'll see when the agent comes in that actually has the gun in one hand. So let me just play it for you now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey. Do not push them into the traffic. Push them away from --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whoa.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God. Oh.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: John Sandweg is the former ICE acting director under President Obama. He joins me now.

John, just seeing this obviously for the first time. This is obviously incredibly close. So I think, you know, I guess unfortunately, but importantly, it puts people right next to this and realizing sort of the horror of it, how suddenly it came about, and how bizarrely it escalated. What do you see here?

[21:49:52]

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ICE ACTING DIRECTOR: You know, Erin, again, I think I see similar things with the Good incident, right, where we have DHS officers who are out of position being asked to do things they don't normally do.

I think it's very important that these were border patrol agents. You know, as I've discussed previously, these are agents trained to operate in the southern border in a very high threat environment. Now they're dealing with protesters.

And then you see the -- what happens when they see a gun is what I suspect is going on here, that they're yelling gun. They see the gun and that's a very tense, very difficult situation.

There needs to be an investigation of this. There needs to be a thorough investigation looking at it, just like there needs to be with Miss Good.

But again, what strikes me the most is all the events especially that leads up to the interactions and ultimately the shooting.

BURNETT: And in that, in that lead up, and obviously, you know, we see the violence does come out of nowhere. I mean, you see the scrum and then you see the sudden, you know, frenzy, right.

But before that --

SANDWEG: Yes.

BURNETT: -- it's just one agent seemingly going after a woman with a backpack. And Mr. Pretti sort of interferes, right. He intervenes to try to protect her.

SANDWEG: Yes. I mean, Erin, I think what's important to note is so many of these incidents are rising out of these confrontations with the protesters, right.

And as I was saying a moment ago, we've pulled up these border patrol agents and put them in an urban environment where they're dealing with things they don't deal with.

First Amendment rights, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Where is that line between what is interfering with -- you know, interfering with a law enforcement officer or committing a crime, versus what is constitutionally protected speech? We've seen an incredibly aggressive response in that setting, right.

But that is not to be unexpected. I think there's a reason the administration likes deploying the border patrol agents, because they operate in such a high-risk environment, they typically confront threats like this with a maximum degree of aggression, which can be absolutely appropriate when you're confronting drug mules in the -- in the desert in the middle of the night and you're alone in southern, you know, remote parts of Arizona.

But it's not appropriate when you're dealing with protesters. And again, I'm not saying that I can make any conclusions based on these videos there, and they're all happening so fast and so choppy, it's very difficult to say.

But I think that any time and I know plenty of former agents have told me there was a question of when, right. When are these shootings going to happen? Not if the shootings are going to happen based on these deployments and based on this aggressive approach. We're kind of -- we seem to be encouraging of the agents when confronting these protesters.

BURNETT: Well, I think what you -- what you point out is that they're used to dealing with and that their initial -- their instincts, which matter would be about confronting a drug mule in the Arizona desert as opposed to a protester trying to blow a whistle to stop a detention, right.

That -- completely night and day in terms of the scenarios.

SANDWEG: Yes.

BURNETT: You know, we've also heard a lot of discussion, and we don't know about these particular agents, we know that the agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good had been -- years and years of experience, ok. He was not an inexperienced person.

SANDWEG: Yes.

BURNETT: We don't know anything about these individuals. Kristi Noem has said historically that they're not putting people who are new trainees on the streets. I don't know if that's true or not, because a lot of what they say doesn't pan out. So I don't know. I'm just telling you what they're saying.

But what do you think the implications are, John, of the fact that training would ordinarily, for a customs and border patrol agent, be at least six months, and now in some cases, getting truncated to six weeks.

SANDWEG: I don't know, Erin, like you just said, we don't know the extent to which those new agents are out on the street. I certainly would be concerned in the out years, right.

I also don't know how many have been hired just yet. It's going to take them a little bit of time. They have the authorization for 10,000 new ICE agents. Obviously, they shortened the training. Obviously they've lowered the thresholds for hiring in the first place. It seems like they're cutting back the background checks.

I'm going to -- I think, though, in next year and the year after, were going to start seeing a lot more of those agents on the street.

But very quickly, Erin, this is not the kind of policing ICE does. ICE traditionally does that targeted policing. And I just want to repeat one thing quickly. ICE has arrested millions of criminal aliens without seeing these kind of images, without causing these kind of -- this kind of chaos on the streets.

But what we've done here is we've now put -- kind of put those agents in the front lines of confronting these protesters, the images we're seeing right now.

That is so far removed from their training. So even if they had the full 13 weeks of training, it just doesn't involve much of the same training those local police would have who deal with those protesters or the parades or other things where you're kind of having to balance those constitutional nuances.

And that is especially true of the border patrol agents, because they just don't operate in big cities. And so that -- that is the most alarming piece of this. And what scares me is that the response after the Miss Good shooting was not to back down, but rather to send a thousand more primarily border patrol agents to the city, you know.

And I think we've all seen the images of what happens when you take those agents out of their normal operating, high-threat environment and put them in a city like this.

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BURNETT: Well, I'm also -- just to pick on pick up on something else you said, John. You said that from talking to ICE agents and obviously so many of them are people who are serving their country, professionals who are working, right? Ok.

So they're telling you that they thought it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, in part because of some of the elements that you were just pointing out.

What else are they telling you right now? I mean, how do some of them see these images and see how ICE is being perceived by so many in this country right now?

SANDWEG: Yes, primarily these are former retired agents who spent their careers as special agents or immigration officers with ICE. Erin, they're not -- the natural reflex of them is always to defend the agency and defend the agents. And that's appropriate. And I understand that.

But I think what bothers them is this question of why. Why are we here from a law enforcement perspective? What are we accomplishing here, right?

And there's this -- everyone -- look, you look at the data and it tells you this is not about criminal aliens. You don't need to do it this way to get criminal aliens off the streets, right?

The cases involving the five-year-old boy was somebody who was already in immigration court proceedings that, you know, you don't go out and arrest someone like that unless you're just looking to rack up stats. That's not about public safety.

But I think that is the big question that I think there is broad consensus, at least amongst the people I speak with, which is why are we here and what -- how are we making America safer by, you know -- why do we need to pay this price right from a from a reputational perspective and everything else to get, you know, for no value.

BURNETT: John Sandweg, I appreciate your time, obviously, former ICE acting director. Thank you.

And thanks so very much --

SANDWEG: Thank you.

BURNETT: -- to all of you for joining us for this breaking news coverage on this Saturday night.

I'm Erin Burnett.

Jessica Dean will be picking up the breaking news after this quick break.

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