Minnesota Officials Sue Federal Government Over Blocked Shooting Probes

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty, and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans sued the federal government Tuesday, alleging the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have blocked state investigators from accessing the evidence needed to probe three shootings by federal immigration agents. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The shootings at issue involve Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, all of whom were shot by federal agents employed by DHS as part of the immigration operation known as Operation Metro Surge. Good and Pretti were both killed; Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg by an ICE agent.

The pattern of obstruction across all three cases follows the same blueprint. When the FBI first began investigating Good's shooting, the bureau initially agreed to share evidence and cooperate with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as part of a parallel investigation into whether her killing was legally justified, then reversed course the same day, blocking BCA investigators from sitting in on key witness interviews or accessing evidence collected at the scene. The probe was later shut down, and multiple federal prosecutors resigned in protest after they were pressured to cease investigating Good's death as a civil rights case and were ordered to treat it instead as a case of assault on a federal officer.

The situation at the Pretti crime scene was equally stark. In the hours after Pretti's shooting, state investigators obtained a search warrant from a Hennepin County judge to access the scene, an "unusual" move they noted in a federal court filing, but federal agents refused to honor it and physically blocked state investigators from the area. BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in legal filings that "in my 20-plus years at the BCA, prior to 2026, I had never encountered a situation in which federal authorities blocked BCA access to an incident where there is concurrent federal and state jurisdiction."

Any lingering hope that the FBI would share information in the Pretti investigation was shattered when the BCA announced the bureau had formally notified it that it would not share information, despite initial signals following a meeting with White House border czar Tom Homan. Gov. Tim Walz responded on X: "Minnesota needs impartial investigations into the shootings of American citizens on our streets. Trump's left hand cannot investigate his right hand." The lack of cooperation extends to both the Good and Sosa-Celis investigations, the BCA confirmed.

The new lawsuit names the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who presided over the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

The three shootings unfolded during a months-long federal operation with few modern parallels. On December 4, 2025, DHS announced Operation Metro Surge, and on January 6, 2026, DHS announced an expansion to what it called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, sending 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old American woman, was fatally shot in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7, 2026. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents at the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026.

In all three incidents, DHS officials made extraordinary public statements about the victims; DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists within hours of their killings. The Justice Department has since dropped felony assault charges against Sosa-Celis and another man, Aljorna, and is instead investigating two ICE officers for lying about the incident.

Hennepin County Attorney Moriarty, who has been demanding evidence through formal Touhy demands, framed the obstruction in blunt terms. "There's no mystery about how these people died, they were shot to death," Moriarty said. "It'd be much easier if the federal government were not hiding evidence from us and obstructing our ability to do the investigation."

The BCA, which has historically investigated shootings by law enforcement officials, has been blocked from participating in the investigations of all three January incidents in Minneapolis. Moriarty said her office has received over 1,000 submissions through public evidence portals set up to collect videos and other materials from the public.

Spokespeople for DHS and the Justice Department could not be immediately reached for comment.