(The Hill) — A group of Minnesota residents suing over immigration officers’ tactics returned to court Saturday evening after a man was fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis.
The residents, whose legal team includes the state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) branch, are pushing to reinstate court-ordered restrictions on how federal agents respond to protests in the state. The plaintiffs wrote in a new filing that the shooting demonstrates “escalating, imminent risks.”
“Intervening events that post-date the parties’ filings have created an urgent need for intervention to prevent irreparable injury to the named plaintiffs, protesters, and observers,” the filing states.
Earlier on Saturday, federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed a man identified by officials as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse. The Department of Homeland Security said he was armed and violently resisted agents conducting a targeted immigration enforcement operation.
“I don’t know why they shot him,” an unnamed witness to the shooting wrote in a declaration filed alongside the plaintiffs’ new motion. “He was only helping. I was five feet from him and they just shot him.”
It marked the second fatal shooting in Minnesota involving federal immigration agents in the wake of the Trump administration flooding enforcement efforts into the state, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.
The residents filed the lawsuit on Dec. 17, claiming that officers were violating the First Amendment at protests that erupted across the Twin Cities as federal resources arrived.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, an appointee of former President Biden, last week agreed to place restrictions on federal agents’ tactics in the state.
Her injunction blocked them from retaliating against peaceful protestors or using pepper spray and “similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools” against them.
The Justice Department has said Menendez’s order endangers immigration officers and public safety.
“To be clear, plaintiffs cannot establish any constitutional violations. But regardless, the district court’s injunction is legally untenable several times over,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings this week.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit agreed to temporarily lift the injunction until it rules on the next stage of the Trump administration’s appeal.
The residents’ new push asks the 8th Circuit to reinstate Menendez’s injunction in light of Saturday’s shooting. The residents warned that “every hour” without an intervention presents “new opportunities” for harm, urging a ruling by Sunday at 5 p.m. CST.
