WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined during a U.S. House hearing Tuesday to apologize to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the victims of fatal shootings by immigration officers in Minneapolis last month.
Top Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, had said both Minneapolis residents engaged in “domestic terrorism.” Good was a poet and mother of three and Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse.
ICE acting Director Todd Lyons demurred when asked by California Democrat Eric Swalwell if he would apologize for that characterization.
“I’m not going to speak to any ongoing investigation,” Lyons said.
Lawmakers on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee grilled Lyons, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow during Tuesday’s hearing, following the fatal shootings of Good on Jan. 7 and Pretti on Jan. 24. The deportation campaign in Minneapolis began more than two months ago.
Following the shootings, Democrats have pushed for policy changes to the appropriations bill that funds the agency for fiscal year 2026, scrambling a bipartisan agreement on the measure.
If lawmakers don’t reach a deal by Friday, funding for much of DHS will run out. Funding for immigration enforcement will remain due to provisions in Republicans’ tax cuts and spending law last year.
Scott called the thousands of protestors and legal observers in Minnesota “paid agitators.” There is no evidence of that.
Noem, who Democrats are pushing to impeach, was not at the hearing.
The chair of the committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, acknowledged that the country was at an “inflection point” and called the deaths of Good and Pretti “unacceptable and preventable.”
But he otherwise largely defended federal immigration officials and the Trump administration’s enforcement tactics.
The top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the Trump administration was weaponizing DHS against Americans.
Body cameras, masks and roving patrols
Democrats questioned Scott and Lyons on a handful of policy proposals that Democrats are pushing for in the DHS appropriations bill.
The Democrats’ proposals include mandating body cameras for immigration agents and requiring those officers to identify themselves and not wear masks.
Thompson asked Lyons how many body cameras ICE officers have. Noem earlier this month announced DHS would be sending body cameras to all ICE officers across the country.
Lyons said about 3,000 ICE officers currently have body cameras with another 6,000 cameras on the way.
Scott said that about 10,000 Border Patrol agents have body cameras out of 20,000 agents.
Democratic Rep. Tim Kennedy of New York asked Lyons if he would commit to instructing ICE agents to stop wearing face coverings and masks in enforcement actions.
“No,” Lyons said.
Kennedy then asked Lyons if he believed Noem should resign, given the deadly shootings of Good and Pretti.
“I’m not going to comment on that,” Lyons said.
GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, a former chair of the committee who is retiring next year, said some of the roving patrols should be kept at the southern border, rather than in residential areas.
“I’ve called for de-escalation after the two deaths, the two shootings that took place,” McCaul said. “I believe that these roving patrols should be done at the border rather than in the major cities of the United States.”
Democrats are also calling for an end to those roving patrols in enforcement in the interior of the U.S.
McCaul added that federal immigration agents “are not trained to effectuate crowd control.”
“They are trained to move in surgically, go in and remove these dangerous, violent criminals from the United States of America,” he said.
Judgment day, Klan invoked
The hearing had a few heated exchanges between Democrats and the administration officials.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, who is facing federal charges after a clash with immigration officers at a detention facility in Newark where she tried to conduct an unannounced oversight visit, asked Lyons if he considered himself a religious person.
Lyons said he did and McIver asked him how he thought “judgment day would work for you with so much blood on your hands.”
“I’m not going to entertain the question,” Lyons said.
She asked Lyons if he thought he was “going to hell.”
Garbarino quickly shut down her line of questioning.
Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois criticized the officials before her, and called for ICE to be abolished.
“I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol,” she said. “Those activities were criminal and so are yours.”
