Hours after Alex Pretti was shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis at the weekend, Donald Trump was quick to blame the 37-year-old nurse for his own death.
Within two days, in the face of widespread outrage, including from within his own party, the US president made one of the sharpest reversals of his second term, backing off his most forceful immigration enforcement tactics and repudiating some of the most powerful members of his administration.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the architect of his sweeping immigration crackdown, had swiftly labelled Pretti a “would-be assassin” in the wake of the shooting.
But on Tuesday, the president distanced himself from Miller’s comments. When asked if Pretti was acting like an assassin, Trump said “no” and “I don’t think so”, and called for “a very honourable and honest investigation” into the nurse’s death.
The pivot came after Trump on Monday handed control of the Minneapolis operation to border tsar Tom Homan, replacing Greg Bovino, the immigration enforcement commander who has become one of the most prominent figures in the president’s nationwide immigration raids.
The president had conciliatory calls with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, vowing to work with the two Democrats after spending weeks verbally attacking them.
He also held a lengthy meeting with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who had framed Pretti’s killing as an act of self-defence against “domestic terrorism”. Trump has rebuffed calls, including from Republican senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, to sack her.
The pressure on Trump to back away from his most hardline stances on immigration began to rise earlier this month after a federal agent shot and killed Renée Nicole Good, another Minneapolis resident who opposed the federal immigration raids, while she was in her car.
But the tipping point appears to have been Pretti’s killing. Republicans in Congress have struggled to defend the administration’s rhetoric and handling of the latest shooting, with an increasing number of them calling for an independent investigation into his death.
“Escalating the rhetoric doesn’t help, and it actually loses credibility, and so I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognise the tragedy, and to say we don’t want . . . anyone’s lives to be lost,” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on his podcast on Monday.
“The politicians who are pouring gasoline on to this fire, they need to stop,” he added.
Democrats who have otherwise been sympathetic to Trump’s immigration crackdown are refusing to sign off on a bill to boost funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, even at the risk of a partial government shutdown.
“Americans have died. [Noem] is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy. DO NOT make the mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary,” John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, said on X.
While Trump has rejected calls to fire Noem, public opinion appears to be souring on the president’s handling of immigration, an issue where he has long had an edge over Democrats.
Reuters/Ipsos surveys conducted before and after Pretti’s killing found that 39 per cent of Americans approved of the president’s handling of immigration, compared to 53 per cent who disapproved, reversing previous support for Trump’s policy during the 2024 campaign against Kamala Harris and at the start of his second presidency.
Following Pretti’s killing, the White House even found itself at odds with champions of gun rights on the conservative right, a core constituency for the president.
The president and senior administration officials have criticised Pretti for carrying a gun, even if he did not brandish it, saying it represented a threat to law enforcement officers. “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” Trump said on Tuesday.
But gun rights advocates have balked at the notion that simply carrying a weapon justifies being shot by federal agents.
“Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right, and if you don’t understand this you have no business in law enforcement or government,” Thomas Massie, a Republican lawmaker from Kentucky, wrote on X.
Even the staunchly conservative National Rifle Association urged an investigation into the shooting: “Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalisations and demonizing law-abiding citizens,” it posted on its X account.
Business leaders have also started to weigh in on the immigration crackdown, adding to the pressure on Trump.
“What’s happening with ICE is going too far. There is a big difference between deporting violent criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get the distinction right,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman wrote in an internal message this week that was first reported by The New York Times.
“President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he will rise to this moment and unite the country,” he added.
Additional reporting by Cristina Criddle in San Francisco