Minnesota candidate bows out over Republican response to Pretti shooting 

Republican candidate Chris Madel says he is ending his campaign for governor of Minnesota following the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents.

Madel said late on Monday he would step down from the campaign, citing the negative impact of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “Operation Metro Surge” on the city of Minneapolis, where two people have been killed by federal agents.

“I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” Madel said in a nearly 11-minute video shared on X.

Madel, a lawyer who represented an ICE agent who shot dead US citizen Renee Good in Minnesota in early January, said he supports deporting the “worst of the worst” from the state, but Operation Metro Surge had gone “far beyond its stated focus on public safety threats” since it began in December.

“United States citizens, particularly those of colour, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That is wrong. ICE has authorised its agents to raid homes using a civil warrant that needs only be signed by a Border Patrol agent. That’s unconstitutional, and that’s wrong,” Madel says in the video.

Madel said the party had made it “nearly impossible” for Republicans like him to win a statewide election in Minnesota, even as the Democratic Party in the state is embroiled in a sweeping corruption scandal.

Madel’s decision comes just days after US Border Patrol agents shot dead Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, while he was filming an Operation Metro Surge patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday.

The shooting unleashed a wave of outrage across the US, as well as questions about how it was handled by top White House officials such as Kristi Noem, who heads the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Noem and her department – which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – were quick to place the blame on Pretti in the aftermath of the shooting, who she accused of “brandishing” a weapon at Border Patrol officers and engaging in “domestic terrorism”.

Pretti was a licensed gun owner and armed at the time of his killing. Video evidence shows he was not holding his gun at the time he was shot. Instead, CBP agents can be seen disarming Pretti before shooting him multiple times.

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told Al Jazeera that Noem and others had broken with traditional protocol following a civilian shooting.

“The response of the homeland secretary there was very offensive and off the cuff. When you have a shooting of a civilian by a law enforcement officer, there should not be comment until the facts come out,” said Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007 under President George W Bush.

Noem’s remarks and the narrative around the shooting drew rare criticism from Republicans, some of whom took issue with the characterisation of Pretti’s gun at the scene.

Republicans such as Senators Bill Cassidy and Lisa Murkowski, Representative Thomas Massie, and traditionally conservative organisations like the National Rifle Association, have all pushed back and alluded to Pretti’s right to bear arms under the US Constitution.

“Lawfully carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American — especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed,” Murkowski wrote on X.

Senator Thom Tillis, another Republican, also appeared to tacitly criticise Trump officials on X, writing that “any administration official who rushes to judgement and tries to shut down an investigation” would do a disservice to the president and the nation.

Cassidy, Murkowski, and Tillis are among a small group of congressional Republicans who have called for an in-depth investigation into Pretti’s shooting.

David Smith, an expert in US politics and foreign policy at the University of Sydney in Australia, told Al Jazeera that silence elsewhere in the Republican Party also spoke volumes.

“The fact that most Republicans are really quiet about it is in itself a very telling sign,” Smith said.

“Because of the fact the Department of Homeland Security suggested that, because Alex Pretti was carrying a gun, therefore he was a terrorist … A lot of Republicans are really worried about what their pro-gun constituents are going to think,” he said.

Smith said disquiet had spread beyond the pro-gun lobby, as well, to other corners of the Republican Party that fear government overreach.

“They’re looking at this situation in American cities where you have armed federal troops wearing masks with no accountability whatsoever using violence in almost a seemingly random way,” he continued.

“This really looks like the government just throwing its weight around in ways that are dangerous to ordinary people.”