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MINNEAPOLIS — Family members say the man killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis on Saturday was an intensive care nurse at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital who cared deeply about people and was upset by President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in his city.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula leopard dog who also recently died. He had participated in protests following the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer on Jan. 7.

“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” said Michael Pretti, Alex’s father. “He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests.”

Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois. Like Good, court records showed he had no criminal record and his family said he had never had any interactions with law enforcement beyond a handful of traffic tickets.

In a recent conversation with their son, his parents, who live in Colorado, told him to be careful when protesting.

“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”

The Department of Homeland Security said that the man was shot after he “approached” Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. Officials did not specify if Pretti brandished the gun. In bystander videos of the shooting that emerged soon after, Pretti is seen with a phone in his hand but none appears to show him with a visible weapon.

Family members said Pretti owned a handgun and had a permit to carry a concealed handgun in Minnesota. They said they had never known him to carry it.

Alex Pretti’s family struggles for information about what happened

The family first learned of the shooting when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. They watched the video and said the man killed appeared to be their son. They then tried reaching out to officials in Minnesota.

“I can’t get any information from anybody,” Michael Pretti said Saturday. “The police, they said call Border Patrol, Border Patrol’s closed, the hospitals won’t answer any questions.”

Eventually, the family called the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, who they said confirmed had a body matching the name and description of their son.

Alex Pretti grew up in Green Bay, Wisc., where he played football and baseball and ran track for Preble High School. He was a Boy Scout and sang in the Green Bay Boy Choir.

After graduation, he went to the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in biology, society, and the environment, according to the family. He worked as a research scientist before returning to school to become a registered nurse.

Pretti had protested before

Pretti’s ex-wife, Rachel N. Canoun, said she was not surprised he would have been involved in protesting Trump’s immigration crackdown. She said she had not spoken to him since they divorced more than two years ago and she moved to another state.

She said he was a Democratic voter and that he had participated in the wave of street protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, not far from the couple’s neighborhood. She described him as someone who might shout at law enforcement officers at a protest, but she had never known him to be physically confrontational.

“These kinds of things, you know, he felt the injustice to it,” Canoun said. “So it doesn’t surprise me that he would be involved.”

Canoun said Pretti got a permit to carry a concealed firearm about three years ago and that he owned at least one semiautomatic handgun when they separated.

“He didn’t carry it around me, because it made me uncomfortable,” she said.

Pretti had ‘a great heart’

Pretti lived in a four-unit condominium building about 2 miles from where he was shot. Neighbors described him as quiet and warmhearted.

“He’s a wonderful person,” said Sue Gitar, who lived downstairs from Pretti and said he moved into the building about three years ago. “He has a great heart.”

If there was something suspicious going on in the neighborhood, or when they worried the building might have a gas leak, he would jump in to help.

Pretti lived alone and worked long hours as a nurse, but he was not a loner, his neighbors said, and would sometimes have friends over.

His neighbors knew he had guns — he’d occasionally take a rifle to shoot at a gun range — but were surprised at the idea that he might carry a pistol on the streets.

“I never thought of him as a person who carried a gun,” said Gitar.

Pretti was passionate about the outdoors

A competitive bicycle racer who lavished care on his new Audi, Pretti had also been deeply attached to his dog, who died about a year ago.

His parents said their last conversation with their son was a couple of days before his death. They talked about repairs he had done to the garage door of his home. The worker was a Latino man, and they said with all that was happening in Minneapolis he gave the man a $100 tip.

Pretti’s mother said her son cared immensely about the direction the county was headed, especially the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations.

“He hated that, you know, people were just trashing the land,” Susan Pretti said. “He was an outdoorsman. He took his dog everywhere he went. You know, he loved this country, but he hated what people were doing to it.”

LONDON — U.S. President Donald Trump heaped praise Saturday on British soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, in a post on social media that represented a partial reversal of comments he made this week that drew a cascade of criticism in the U.K., particularly from families of those killed and seriously injured in the conflict.

In the wake of a conversation earlier with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said on Truth Social that the “great and very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America.”

He described the 457 British servicemen and women who died in Afghanistan and those that were badly injured as “among the greatest of all warriors.”

Trump added that the bond between the two countries’ militaries is “too strong to ever be broken” and that the U.K. “with tremendous heart and soul, is second to none (except for the USA).”

Trump’s comments follow an interview with Fox Business Network on Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, when he said he wasn’t sure the other 31 nations in NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested and that troops from those countries stayed “a little off the front lines.”

Trump did not apologize directly for those comments, nor retract them, as Starmer had suggested in his initial response on Friday when he described the words of the president as “insulting and frankly appalling.”

Starmer’s office in No. 10 Downing Street said the issue was raised in a conversation between the pair on Saturday, in which other topics were discussed, including the war in Ukraine and security in the Arctic region.

“The prime minister raised the brave and heroic British and American soldiers who fought side by side in Afghanistan, many of whom never returned home,” Downing Street said in a statement. “We must never forget their sacrifice.”

Trump’s view as expressed in the Fox Business interview stands at odds with the reality that in October 2001, nearly a month after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. led an international coalition in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida, which had used the country as its base, and the group’s Taliban hosts.

Alongside the U.S. were troops from dozens of countries, including from NATO, whose mutual-defense mandate had been triggered for the first time after the attacks on New York and Washington. More than 150,000 British troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the invasion, the largest contingent after the American one.

The Italian and French governments also expressed their disapproval Saturday at Trump’s comments, with both describing them as “unacceptable.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal immigration officers shot and killed a man Saturday in Minneapolis, drawing hundreds of protesters onto the frigidly cold streets in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting weeks earlier.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said a 37-year-old man was killed but declined to identify him. He added that information about what led up to the shooting was limited. The man was identified by his parents as Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse.

The Minnesota National Guard, which had been activated earlier by Gov. Tim Walz, was assisting local police amid growing protests.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him. O’Hara said police believe the man was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.” The officer who shot the man is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran, federal officials said.

President Donald Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out at Minnesota’s governor and the Minneapolis mayor.

Trump shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered and said: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”

Video shows officers, man who was shot

In a bystander video obtained by the Associated Press, protesters can be heard blowing whistles and shouting profanities at agents on Nicollet Avenue.

The video shows an officer shoving a person who is wearing a brown jacket, skirt, and black tights and carrying a water bottle. That person reaches out for a man and the two link up, embracing. The man, wearing a brown jacket and black hat, seems to be holding his phone up toward the officer.

The same officer shoves the man in his chest and the two, still embracing, fall back.

The video then shifts to a different part of the street and then comes back to the two individuals unlinking from each other. The video shifts focus again and then shows three officers surrounding the man.

Soon at least seven officers surround the man. One is on the man’s back and another who appears to have a cannister in his hand strikes a blow to the man’s chest. Several officers try to bring the man’s arms behind his back as he appears to resist. As they pull his arms, his face is briefly visible on camera. The officer with the cannister strikes the man near his head several times.

A shot rings out, but with officers surrounding the man, it’s not clear from where the shot came. Multiple officers back off of the man after the shot. More shots are heard. Officers back away and the man lies motionless on the street.

The police chief appealed for calm, both from the public and and from federal law enforcement.

“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity, and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” the chief said. “We urge everyone to remain peaceful.”

Customs and Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said the officer who shot the man had extensive training as a range safety officer and in using less-lethal force.

“This is only the latest attack on law enforcement. Across the country, the men and women of DHS have been attacked, shot at,” he said.

Walz, a Democrat, said he had no confidence in federal officials and that the state would lead the investigation into the latest fatal shooting.

The New York Times reported that a U.S. official said that DHS would investigate the shooting by its officer, with the assistance of the FBI.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said during a news conference Saturday that federal officers blocked his agency from the shooting scene, and when they returned with a signed judicial warrant, they were still blocked.

Protests continue in Minneapolis

Protesters continued to converge at the scene of the shooting despite dangerously cold weather.

At Saturday midday, the worst of an extreme cold wave was over, but the temperature was still -6 degrees. The Arctic blast hadn’t deterred thousands of protesters from marching in downtown Minneapolis on Friday afternoon to call for ICE to leave the Minnesota.

The shooting happened amid widespread daily protests in the Twin Cities since the Jan. 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fired into her vehicle. Saturday’s shooting unfolded just over a mile away from where Good was shot.

After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car. Protesters dragged garbage dumpsters from alleyways to block the streets, and people who gathered chanted, “ICE out now,” referring to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“They’re killing my neighbors!” said Minneapolis resident Josh Koskie.

Federal officers wielded batons and deployed flash bangs on the crowd.

Walz said he had been in contact with the White House after the shooting. He urged Trump to end what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be impeached and denounced statements from the administration about the man DHS agents killed.

“Apparently, the Trump administration and its secret police only support the First and Second Amendments when it’s convenient to them,” Thompson said in a statement.

Thompson called on Demorats in the U.S. Senate to vote against a funding bill for DHS that passed the lower chamber last week.“This is un-American and has to stop,” Thompson said. “The House must immediately take steps to impeach Kristi Noem.”

Vice President JD Vance responded to the shooting in a post on X and said that when he visited Minneapolis this week, “what the ICE agents wanted more than anything was to work with local law enforcement so that situations on the ground didn’t get out of hand.”

He accused local officials in Minnesota of ignoring requests from ICE agents to work with them.

Notably, federal officials refused to cooperate with local officials on an investigation into the shooting death of Renee Good on Jan. 7 and blocked state investigators from the site of Saturday’s shooting.

DALLAS — Freezing rain was falling in West Texas on Friday as a huge, dayslong winter storm began a trek that threatened to bring snow, sleet, ice, and bone-chilling temperatures as well as extensive power outages to about half the U.S. population.

Forecasters warned that catastrophic damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival a hurricane. Schools in Chicago and other Midwestern cities called off classes Friday, airlines canceled thousands of weekend flights, churches moved Sunday services online, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville decided to hold its Saturday night radio performance without fans. Carnival parades in Louisiana were canceled or rescheduled.

At least 182 million people were under watches or warnings for ice and snow and more than 210 million were under cold weather advisories or warnings. In many places, those overlapped. Utility companies braced for power outages because ice-coated trees and power lines can keep falling long after a storm has passed.

“It’s going to be a big storm,” Maricela Resendiz said as she picked up chicken, eggs, and pizzas at a Dallas store to get her, her 5-year-old son and her boyfriend through the weekend. Her plans: “Staying in, just being out of the way.”

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Freezing rain was already slickening roads in Lubbock, Texas, on Friday afternoon as temperatures dropped. After sliding into the South with ice and sleet, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot of snow from Washington, D.C., through New York and Boston, the National Weather Service predicted.

Arctic air was the first piece to fall in place

Arctic air that spilled down from Canada prompted schools throughout the Midwest to cancel classes Friday. With windchills as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, frostbite could set in within 10 minutes, making it too dangerous to walk to school or wait for the bus.

In Bismarck, N.D., where the windchill was minus 41 Fahrenheit, Colin Cross cleaned out an empty unit for the apartment complex where he works.

“I’ve been here awhile and my brain stopped working,” said Cross, bundled up in long johns, two long-sleeved shirts, a jacket, hat, hood, gloves and boots.

Despite bitter cold, a protest over an immigration crackdown went on as planned in Minnesota, with thousands demonstrating in downtown Minneapolis.

Nationwide, more than 1,000 flights were delayed or canceled Friday, with well over half of them in Dallas, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. About 2,300 Saturday flights were canceled.

In Oklahoma, Department of Transportation workers treated roads with salt brine, the Highway Patrol canceled troopers’ days off, and National Guard units were activated to help stranded drivers.

The federal government put nearly 30 search and rescue teams on standby. Officials had more than 7 million meals, 600,000 blankets, and 300 generators placed throughout the area the storm was expected to cross, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

President Donald Trump said via social media that his administration was coordinating with state and local officials and “FEMA is fully prepared to respond.”

Northeast prepares for heavy snow

The Northeast could see its heaviest snow in years.

Boston declared a cold emergency through the weekend, and Connecticut was working with neighboring New York and Massachusetts in case travel restrictions are needed on major highways.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont urged people to go grocery shopping now and “stay home on Sunday.”

Philadelphia announced schools would be closed Monday. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. told students, “It’s also appropriate to have one or two very safe snowball fights.”

Ice could take down power lines and pipes could freeze

Once ice and snow end, the frigid air from the north will head south and east. It will take a while to thaw out, an especially dangerous prospect because ice can add hundreds of pounds to power lines and branches and make them more susceptible to snapping, especially if it’s windy.

In at least 11 Southern states from Texas to Virginia, a majority of homes are heated by electricity, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

A severe cold snap five years ago took down much of the power grid in Texas, leaving millions without power for days and resulting in hundreds of deaths. Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday that won’t happen again, and utility companies were bringing in thousands of employees to help keep the power on.

Pipes are also at risk.

In Atlanta, where temperatures could dip to 10 degrees and stay below freezing for 36 hours, M. Cary & Daughters Plumbing co-owner Melissa Cary ordered all the pipe and repair supplies she could get. She said her daily calls could go from about 40 to several hundred.

“We’re out there; we can’t feel our fingers, our toes; we’re soaking wet,” Cary said. “I keep the hot chocolate and soup coming.”

People are hunkering down

Stephen McDonald, who hasn’t had a home in three years, was hoping to get out of the cold in Jackson, Miss. But the Shower Power homeless shelter was adding spray foam insulation and ceiling heaters, keeping it closed until Saturday.

Friday night’s forecast called for lows near freezing. “Your hands get frozen solid, and they hurt real bad,” said McDonald. “It’s not good.”

At the University of Georgia in Athens, sophomore Eden England was staying on campus to ride out the weather with her friends, even as the school encouraged students to leave dorms and go home because of concerns about losing power.

“I was texting my parents and we kind of just realized that whether I’m here or at home, it’s going to suck either way,” England said. “So I’d rather be with my friends, kind of struggling together if anything happens.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Police arrested about 100 clergy demonstrating against immigration enforcement at Minnesota’s largest airport Friday, and thousands gathered in downtown Minneapolis despite Arctic temperatures to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown.

The protests are part of a broader movement against President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement across the state, with labor unions, progressive organizations, and clergy urging Minnesotans to stay away from work, school, and even shops. The faith leaders gathered at the airport to protest deportation flights and urge airlines to call for an end to to what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.

The clergy were issued misdemeanor citations of trespassing and failure to comply with a peace officer and were then released, said Jeff Lea, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman. They were arrested outside the main terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport because they went beyond the reach of their permit for demonstrating and disrupted airline operations, he said.

The Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church in St. Paul said police ordered them to leave but she and others decided to stay and be arrested to show support for migrants, including members of her congregation who are afraid to leave their homes. She planned to go back to her church after her brief detention to hold a prayer vigil.

“We cannot abide living under this federal occupation of Minnesota,” Tollgaard said.

Protesters demand ICE leave Minnesota

The Rev. Elizabeth Barish Browne traveled from Cheyenne, Wyo., to participate in the rally in downtown Minneapolis, where the high temperature was minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit despite a bright sun.

“What’s happening here is clearly immoral,” the Unitarian Universalist minister said. “It’s definitely chilly, but the kind of ice that’s dangerous to us is not the weather.”

Protesters have gathered daily in the Twin Cities since Jan. 7, when 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Federal law enforcement officers have repeatedly squared off with community members and activists who track their movements.

Sam Nelson said he skipped work so he could join the march. He said he’s a former student of the Minneapolis high school where federal agents detained someone after class earlier this month. That arrest led to altercations between federal officers and bystanders.

“It’s my community,” Nelson said. “Like everyone else, I don’t want ICE on our streets.”

Organizers said Friday morning that more than 700 businesses statewide have closed in solidarity with the movement, from a bookstore in tiny Grand Marais near the Canadian border to the landmark Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis.

“We’re achieving something historic,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, one of the more than 100 participating groups.

Detention of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old

A 2-year-old was reunited with her mother Friday, a day after she was detained with her father outside of their home in South Minneapolis, lawyer Irina Vaynerman told the Associated Press.

Vaynerman said they had quickly challenged the family’s detention in federal court. The petition states that the child, a citizen of Ecuador, was brought to the U.S. as a newborn. The child and her father, Elvis Tipan Echeverria, both have a pending asylum application and neither are subject to final orders of removal.

A U.S. district judge on Thursday had barred the government from transferring the toddler out of state, but she and her father were on a commercial flight to Texas about 20 minutes later, according to court filings. They were flown back Friday.

Agents arrested Tipan Echeverria during a targeted operation, according to a DHS statement said. DHS said the child’s mother was in the area but refused to take the child.

Vaynerman rejected that explanation, saying Tipan Echeverria was “not allowed” to bring his 2-year-old to her mother inside their home.

DHS repeated its allegation Friday that the father of 5-year-old Liam Ramos abandoned him during his arrest by immigration officers in Columbia Heights on Tuesday, leading to the child being detained, too.

Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Liam was detained because his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “fled from the scene.” The two are detained together at the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, which is intended to hold families. McLaughlin said officers tried to get Liam’s mother to take him, but she refused to accept custody.

The family’s attorney Marc Prokosch said he thinks the mother refused to open the door to the ICE officers because she was afraid she would be detained. Columbia Heights district superintendent Zena Stenvik said Liam was “used as bait.”

Prokosch found nothing in state records to suggest Liam’s father has a criminal history.

On Friday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino sought to shift the narrative away from Liam’s detention by attacking the news media for, in his view, insufficient coverage of children who have lost parents to violence by people in the country illegally. After briefly mentioning the 5-year-old during a news conference, he talked about a mother of five who was killed in August 2023.

Details from Good’s autopsy

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner posted an initial autopsy report online for Good that classified her death as a homicide and determined she died from “multiple gunshots wounds.”

A more detailed independent autopsy commissioned by Good’s family said one bullet pierced the left side her head and exited on the right side. This autopsy, released Wednesday through the Romanucci & Blandin law firm, said bullets also struck her in the arm and breast, although those injuries weren’t immediately life-threatening.

Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for the family, said in a statement that the family is still awaiting the full report from the medical examiner and “hope that they communicate with Renee’s family and share their report before releasing any further information to the public.”

A spokesperson for the firm said there were no funeral plans to share yet.