The Trump administration has turned over evidence long sought by Minnesota investigators in their ongoing probe into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during pitched protests against an immigration enforcement crackdown earlier this year, state prosecutors announced Monday.
The progress came as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a motorist in Maine on Monday, and Houston prosecutors complained the administration was still withholding critical information in their investigation into a fatal shooting by an ICE officer last week.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the evidence turned over by federal investigators included previously withheld hard drives containing statements, police body camera video and other materials in the Minnesota killings. They also turned over Good’s badly damaged SUV, she said.
“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said. “Any time the government is responsible in whatever way of taking the life of a community member we need to have a full and thorough investigation.”
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed in her vehicle while leaving an anti-immigration enforcement protest in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Her death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse shot and killed by federal officers just weeks later during a Jan. 24 protest, sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement.
The Minneapolis immigration crackdown, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” was billed as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever. It ended in February after thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents withdrew from the state.
At least nine people have been killed since the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign began last year. No one has been charged in connection with the deaths, and the federal government has suggested state prosecutors don’t have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers.
Lawyers for Good’s family said the transfer of evidence represented “an important and meaningful step towards justice and accountability.”
Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota, as well as ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Monday.
Legal wrangling in another ICE-related shooting may have led to evidence release
Moriarty said local investigators have been poring over the evidence after receiving it in recent days, but declined to provide details on what prompted the federal government to turn it over.
Documents recently filed in the lawsuit brought by state and local officials against the Homeland Security and Justice departments, however, suggest the breakthrough came after federal officials asked the state in June for evidence gathered in the investigation of ICE agent Christian Castro.
Castro, 52, was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis. Prosecutors say Castro fired through a home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh while in pursuit of another man.
State and local prosecutors said they would provide evidence in Castro’s case as soon as the federal government agreed to share its evidence in the shootings of Pretti and Good.
Minnesota officials last month sued the administration for access to evidence for investigations into the three shootings.
“We are willing to share evidence with you if the exchange is reciprocal,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans wrote in a legal filing to federal officials. “Each of the federal agencies with whom we have discussed sharing evidence in this case has declined to do so thus far. None has provided any substantive reason for its refusal aside from relaying the perspective that these shootings are solely ‘federal’ matters.”
The pressure may have increased on June 18, when Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison amended their lawsuit against the federal government to add details about the federal government’s refusal to share the evidence collected in the fatal shootings.
Just four days later, Ellison and Moriarty asked the federal judge to push back some deadlines in the case, saying the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s office and state officials “have recently re-engaged in discussions about the prospect of mutual information sharing.”
Ellison, in a statement Monday, said he remains “deeply troubled” it took more than half a year for federal officials to hand over the materials, despite long standing cooperation between the agencies on major investigations.
“It should never have taken this long,” he said in a statement. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”
Houston investigators complain feds are leaving them in dark over ICE-related shooting
Prosecutors in Houston, meanwhile, echoed similar concerns about obtaining critical information from federal officials as they look into last week’s death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades.
The Homeland Security Department has acknowledged officers stopped Salgado Araujo while looking for someone else, but maintains the homebuilder rammed an ICE vehicle while attempting to leave the scene. The agency says that prompted an officer to open fire in self-defense, though it has yet to provide evidence to back up that claim.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Monday that his office doesn’t even know the identities of the ICE officers involved in the shooting or where they are nearly a week later, which he said is highly unusual when an officer shooting results in a death.
“The federal government has not invited us in,” Teare said. “The federal government is not collaborating with us with this investigation.”
Monday’s shooting in Maine involved a man from Colombia who federal officers claimed tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against officers pursuing him for deportation. The shooting took place in Biddeford, a coastal city of about 23,000 people roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland.
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Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this story.
