How Federal Agents Are Investigated When They Kill U.S. Citizens

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Two Americans are dead, shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis seventeen days apart. Renée Nicole Good, 37, mother of three, killed by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, while sitting in her vehicle. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital, shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents on January 24 near his south Minneapolis neighborhood.

Both shootings happened during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s most aggressive immigration enforcement campaign in decades—roughly 2,000 federal agents deployed to Minneapolis-St. Paul, 3,000 arrests in a matter of weeks.

Who investigates when federal agents kill American citizens?

Not the state. Federal officials blocked Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from the crime scenes, refused to identify the agents who fired, withheld evidence. Hennepin County prosecutors had to beg residents on social media to submit videos and photos because the feds wouldn’t share what they’d collected.

Not the Department of Justice. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced “we are not investigating” the ICE agent who shot Good. This reversal came after an FBI supervisor had already determined sufficient grounds existed to open an investigation into whether civil rights were violated. Six career federal prosecutors reportedly resigned or accelerated their departures in protest.

Not DHS’s internal watchdog, which conducts civil oversight—checking whether policies were broken and whether officers should face internal punishment—but doesn’t determine criminal charges and can’t prosecute crimes.

The result is a gap in who’s responsible for oversight when federal agents operate in American cities. Investigations happen behind federal walls with limited transparency, and families of the dead have almost no legal recourse.

Investigative Authority and Procedural Gaps

When an FBI agent shoots someone, the FBI’s Shooting Incident Guides mandate treating the scene as a crime scene, establishing perimeters, identifying witnesses, collecting weapons evidence. Personnel are explicitly told not to remove projectiles from surfaces or move objects with potential bullet holes until reconstruction teams arrive.

Those procedures don’t technically apply when FBI partners with other agencies in operations where no FBI agent fired their weapon. ICE and CBP agents pulled the triggers in Minneapolis, not FBI.

This procedural gap has allowed federal officials to maintain control over crime scenes, restrict state investigators’ access, and prevent the systematic documentation that would normally accompany a criminal investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has authority to investigate DHS employee misconduct, including use of force. But these are civil investigations, not criminal. When criminal conduct is suspected—manslaughter, murder, civil rights violations—the case should go to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division or the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In practice, federal prosecutors almost never bring these cases.

The “Reasonable Officer” Standard

When courts assess whether an agent’s use of deadly force was justified, they apply the “reasonable officer” test—what would a typical officer do in that situation. The question isn’t whether you, reading this months later with full information, think the shooting was reasonable. It’s whether a reasonable officer on the scene, making split-second judgments in circumstances that are chaotic and changing moment-to-moment, would have done the same thing.

Federal officers operate under different legal authorities than state police and receive training shaped by federal operational contexts that courts may view as legitimately different from state policing.

In Pretti’s case, federal agents were trying to move him and another woman out of the roadway. One agent yelled “He’s got a gun” multiple times. Two agents fired their Glocks. The agents said Pretti “resisted” and “a struggle ensued.”

Video evidence analyzed by ProPublica shows a masked agent removing Pretti’s firearm from his hip before the first shots were fired. A former CBP commissioner told ProPublica the shooting might have been prevented—that the decision to immediately use pepper spray created a chaotic scene that likely contributed to Pretti’s death.

In Good’s case, video shows her vehicle departing as she was shot. The federal government’s initial claim that she “attempted to run them over” was contradicted by footage analyzed by The New York Times and ABC News, which showed she was trying to leave. CNN’s Jake Tapper directly challenged DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s characterization on air.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits deadly force unless an officer has solid reason to believe a suspect is a significant threat of death or serious physical injury. The Supreme Court’s 1985 Tennessee v. Garner decision says police can’t shoot a fleeing, non-dangerous felon. There must be solid reason to believe the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm.

Video evidence suggests neither Good nor Pretti posed such threats at the moments they were shot. The investigations that would normally establish these facts have been blocked, delayed, or refused.

Federal Immunity and State Prosecution

Federal agents don’t have absolute immunity from state prosecution. What they have is a federal law that can shield federal officers from state prosecution for actions taken within their federal duties—but only when those actions were reasonable based on what the officer knew at that moment. A judge must examine the specific facts to decide.

A federal agent charged in state court can attempt to move the case to federal court, then argue federal law immunizes them. Even if that argument ultimately fails, the legal process is complicated and time-consuming. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has explicitly refused to investigate shootings that state officials view as unjustified, removing one accountability pathway entirely.

A Minnesota state prosecutor trying to prove an ICE or CBP agent committed murder or manslaughter must overcome arguments about federal legal authority, federal training standards, federal operational contexts—and do it without access to the crime scene evidence federal agents collected and won’t share.

State and Local Investigators Blocked

State and local prosecutors theoretically have authority to investigate federal agents and bring state criminal charges for shootings in their jurisdictions. This authority meets resistance at the crime scene.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose office has jurisdiction over the Pretti killing, issued public pleas for residents to submit “videos, photos and eyewitness accounts” because federal authorities weren’t providing investigative materials. A county prosecutor was reduced to crowdsourcing evidence because the federal government wouldn’t share what it collected at a crime scene in her jurisdiction.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activated the National Guard and sought court orders preventing federal officials from “closing the crime scene, sweeping away the evidence, defying a court order and not allowing anyone to look at it.” One federal court order reportedly commanded the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to cease any independent investigation into the Pretti shooting.

When federal agents operate in state and local communities, they bring federal authority but local consequences. The civilians injured or killed remain local residents. Local courts retain jurisdiction. Local prosecutors have obligations to their communities. The federal government has asserted control over investigations despite operating outside purely federal spaces, resulting in fragmented oversight with no single authority having full access and responsibility.

The DHS Office of Inspector General

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is the designated watchdog for DHS employee misconduct, including ICE and CBP. It functions as a civil oversight body, not a criminal investigative agency. OIG investigations determine whether agency policies were violated and whether internal discipline is warranted. They don’t determine criminal charges and can’t prosecute crimes.

The OIG doesn’t have sufficient staff for the workload. ICE grew from approximately 10,000 officers in early 2025 to over 22,000 by early 2026—an aggressive recruitment campaign that received more than 220,000 applications. Meanwhile, an Illinois auditor general’s performance audit found the OIG’s average investigation completion time worsened to 205 calendar days in fiscal 2023, up 25 days from fiscal 2020. Only 22 percent of cases were completed within 60 days in 2023, compared to 36 percent in 2021 and 2022. That decline happened before ICE doubled in size.

OIG investigations aren’t automatically triggered by every agent-involved shooting. The OIG announced an audit in January 2026 “to determine whether ICE investigates allegations of excessive use of force and holds personnel accountable”—but only after 36 members of Congress, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, requested it. These audits typically take over a year and generate reports, not prosecutions.

Civil Litigation Barriers

Families of victims face limited legal pathways through civil litigation. Unlike state and local police officers, who can be sued under a federal law that lets people sue state and local police for constitutional violations, federal officers can’t be sued under that statute. It explicitly applies only to state and local government officials.

Families must pursue a lawsuit against federal agents personally or file a claim against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The Supreme Court has severely limited lawsuits against federal agents in recent decades, restricting them to three specific situations: Fourth Amendment unreasonable search and seizure, Fifth Amendment gender discrimination, and Eighth Amendment inadequate medical care for prisoners. Most importantly, in the 2022 decision Egbert v. Boule, the Supreme Court rejected such a claim in a border enforcement context. It’s extraordinarily unlikely a family could successfully sue CBP or ICE agents for shooting deaths under this legal theory now.

The Federal Tort Claims Act offers an alternative. Families can file administrative claims against the federal government itself rather than individual agents. They must file a specific government form with the appropriate federal agency, provide detailed descriptions and demand specific sums, then wait for the agency to respond. If denied, they can sue in federal district court—but must prove their case with strong evidence, and even when cases settle they come without any admission of wrongdoing.

Investigative journalist Lila Hassan analyzed six years of ICE shootings and found “there have been seven lawsuits. None of them were successful. One of them is still ongoing.” Of cases that settled, none included an admission of wrongdoing from ICE.

Internal Discipline Failures

ICE and CBP have historically failed to discipline officers involved in shootings. An Office of Inspector General review found ICE’s disciplinary process lacks clear rules for handling complaints consistently and quickly. The lack of reliable tracking and processing procedures prevents ICE from adequately documenting and monitoring completed investigations.

Even when investigations prove wrongdoing happened and recommend punishment, the recommendation goes to the supervisor, who “can decide whether or not to implement that discipline,” Hassan found. A formal finding of misconduct doesn’t necessarily result in any consequences.

Hassan’s research on six years of ICE shootings found “there is no evidence of any indictment ever for an ICE shooting during this time period.”

After Good’s shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem immediately claimed Good had “attempted to run them over” and engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism”—characterizations directly contradicted by video evidence. Trump initially called Good “violent” and “radical,” only later acknowledging her death as “a tragedy.”

The Department of Justice initiated an investigation not of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, but of Good’s widow, who had been working with a local ICE Watch organization.

After the Pretti shooting, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino stated that agents “attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted” and that agents were “fearing for [their] life and the lives and safety of fellow officers.” Video evidence widely available online showed federal agents removing Pretti’s firearm from his hip before the first shots were fired, contradicting the narrative. Following a week of protests and mounting criticism, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced an investigation—but its scope, timeline, and potential outcome remained uncertain.

Congressional Response and Body Camera Mandate

Representative Greg Stanton of Arizona backed the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act, which would limit the weapons federal immigration agents can use—like tear gas and pepper spray—require mandatory body cameras, and limit masked uniforms. The bill would make immigration enforcement follow the same use-of-force rules as other federal law enforcement, allowing force only when “no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist.”

The proposed Protecting Sensitive Locations Act would restore rules that stopped ICE from arresting people in schools, hospitals, and churches that the Trump administration rescinded on January 20, 2025.

In response to congressional pressure and budget disagreements following the shootings, DHS Secretary Noem announced that ICE and CBP officers in Minneapolis would be issued body cameras “effective immediately.” This represented a significant concession—no federal regulation or law previously mandated body cameras for federal law enforcement agencies.

The effectiveness of body cameras depends entirely on policies governing their use. Whether activation is mandatory, whether footage is retained, how long footage is stored, how publicly accessible footage becomes—as of February 2026, the government hadn’t announced any rules.

Current Status of Investigations

As of early February 2026, the investigations into both shootings haven’t moved forward. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced it was pursuing a “path forward” for a joint investigation with the FBI and Department of Justice, but officials were still negotiating and hadn’t set a deadline. The BCA and prosecutors formally requested that the federal government identify the shooting agents, provide body-camera footage, release personnel and training records, and grant access to investigative materials. Those requests remain largely unanswered.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is conducting an audit to determine whether ICE investigates excessive force allegations and holds personnel accountable. Lawmakers urged the OIG to expedite this audit and provide interim findings, recognizing that waiting 12 to 18 months would be too long given that ICE is still operating.

Federal law enforcement agencies use deadly force in American cities with minimal accountability. Investigations occur behind federal walls with limited transparency. The public has no reliable mechanism for understanding whether killings were justified or whether officers face consequences.

When ICE expanded from 10,000 to 22,000 officers within a single year, administrative oversight capacity didn’t expand proportionally. When federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in the same city within weeks, the investigative response fragmented across competing agencies with conflicting interests. When videos contradicted federal narrative claims about what happened, the federal government’s initial response was to blame the victims rather than reexamine the facts.

The current system—spanning federal, state, and local authorities with multiple agencies holding power over the same situation but pursuing different goals, federal agencies with civil investigation authority but criminal investigation reluctance, and federal prosecutors with near-absolute discretion to decline cases—provides inadequate accountability for federal agents who use deadly force against American citizens.

Two families are learning this the hard way. They won’t be the last.

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