The bottom line
New footage of Alex Pretti’s January 13 confrontation with federal immigration agents, verified by the BBC to 97% accuracy via facial recognition, shows him kicking a federal vehicle’s taillight and being tackled to the ground. It is being circulated as though it explains something about the shooting that killed him eleven days later, on January 24. It does not. Under the legal standard that governs every use-of-force case in this country, a prior altercation is not what determines whether a shooting is justified. That determination comes down to a single moment, and what an officer could reasonably have perceived in it.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
What the January 13 footage actually shows
The footage was filmed by The News Movement and later verified by the BBC, which confirmed the identity of the man on screen to a 97% degree of accuracy using facial recognition analysis. On the morning of January 13, federal agents were conducting immigration enforcement operations on a Minneapolis street corner. Observers were shouting at agents as they prepared to leave. The man in the footage kicked the tail light of a federal vehicle. An agent got out, grabbed him, pushed him to the ground. Agents used tear gas and pepper balls on the crowd. The man was held, then released, and walked away.
That is what happened. It is not nothing. Kicking a government vehicle and fighting with federal officers is genuinely stupid and creates serious legal exposure. If Pretti was the man in that video, he had a misdemeanor assault charge waiting for him at minimum, and potentially a felony depending on how prosecutors wanted to run it.
But none of that is what we are discussing here. The conversation the country is having is about whether Border Patrol agents Jesus Ochoa and CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez were legally justified in shooting and killing Alex Pretti on January 24. The January 13 footage does not answer that question. It cannot answer that question. That is not how the legal framework for use of force works.
What actually governs a use-of-force case
The controlling Supreme Court case is Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989). It established that all excessive-force claims against law enforcement are evaluated under the Fourth Amendment’s objective reasonableness standard. The question is not whether officers made perfect decisions. It is whether a reasonable officer, with the same training, in the same circumstances, at the same moment, could have perceived an imminent threat justifying lethal force.
The relevant time window is not January 13. It is the final seconds of the January 24 encounter. The DHS report confirmed that two federal agents fired their weapons at Pretti. The report states an officer shouted “He’s got a gun!” multiple times, and approximately five seconds later, the first shot was fired.
Here is where the facts get complicated for the government’s narrative. Video analyzed by Bellingcat and independently by CNN shows an officer in a gray jacket reaching into the melee and removing a handgun from Pretti’s waistband before the shots were fired. The officer walks away from the scene carrying the weapon. Seconds later, someone shouts “gun,” and the shooting begins. Pretti held a valid Minnesota carry permit. He had no criminal record. The handgun was his, legally owned, legally carried.
The critical question is not whether Pretti had a gun. He did. The question is whether the officer who fired believed Pretti still had a gun and was about to use it, at the moment of the shooting, after a separate agent had already removed it from the scene. That is the entire case. Everything else is noise.
Why the prior encounter is being circulated
The January 13 footage is being amplified by people who want to establish that Pretti was dangerous, anti-government, and prone to violence. The implication is meant to be absorbed by the audience without being stated directly: he had it coming. The legal framework does not accommodate that reasoning. It cannot. Once you allow an officer’s knowledge of a person’s prior behavior to retroactively justify a shooting that may not have been justified in the moment, you have dismantled the constitutional standard that protects every single one of us.
I want to be honest about something, because I think the right wing is doing something here that it usually accuses the left of doing. We are being intellectually dishonest. The same movement that correctly argues that a defensive shooting is judged by the facts of the encounter and not by a perpetrator’s prior record is now circulating footage of a prior encounter to influence how people feel about this shooting. Those two positions cannot both be true. Either the Graham standard applies, or it does not. I believe it applies. That means the January 13 footage is irrelevant.
To be equally fair in the other direction: the fact that Pretti was an ICU nurse who helped veterans, which has been circulated heavily on the left, is also not legally relevant. His character and his community contributions do not determine whether the officers were justified. Nothing about who he was as a person determines whether the officers were justified. The standard is objective. That is its strength.
The gun rights dimension
Here is the part that should genuinely bother Second Amendment supporters who are currently defending the government’s narrative.
The NRA released a statement calling a federal prosecutor’s claim that “if you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you” both dangerous and wrong. The NRA was right. Alex Pretti had a Minnesota permit to carry. He was exercising a constitutionally protected right. Carrying a firearm while protesting government action is not just legal, it is one of the oldest traditions in American civic life. The argument that his mere possession of a licensed handgun placed him in a category where lethal force was foreseeable is an argument that every gun owner in this country should reject aggressively, because it would be used against you.
If federal agents can point to the presence of a legally carried firearm as contributing justification for a shooting, the Second Amendment becomes incompatible with the First. You can protest or you can carry. Not both. That is not a framework any serious defender of constitutional rights should accept, regardless of who is holding office or what they think of immigration enforcement.
The Bellingcat and CNN analyses show the gun was removed before the shots were fired. The central factual question is whether the shooting officer knew that or perceived otherwise in the moment. That question is being actively investigated, and the FBI was assigned to lead the investigation following significant public pressure. The DHS internal review contradicted portions of the Trump administration’s initial account.
The honest analysis
I have looked at the available video from January 24 carefully. The officer in the gray jacket removes Pretti’s firearm before the first shot is fired. That is visible in the footage. Whether the officer who fired knew the gun had been removed is the only question that matters legally. From what I can see, the case looks very bad for the government. There are possible defenses available, but they require the shooting officer to have had a genuine, reasonable, real-time perception that Pretti was still armed and actively threatening. Given the sequence of events shown in the video, establishing that will be extremely difficult.
What I am not willing to do, and what I think our side should stop doing, is use footage of a prior encounter to substitute for that analysis. It is intellectually dishonest. It is the same move we criticize when the left does it. And it matters here in a way that goes beyond this particular case.
The minute we accept that a prior altercation can retroactively justify a shooting, we have handed the government a tool it will use against people we actually agree with. The Graham standard is not some liberal invention. It is a protection rooted in the Fourth Amendment. It protects you. It protects every legal gun owner who carries at a rally, a protest, or anywhere else in public. Defending it consistently, even when it produces uncomfortable conclusions, is not weakness. It is principle.
The January 13 footage tells us something about who Alex Pretti was. It tells us nothing about whether the shooting was justified. Those are different questions. We should stop pretending they are the same one.
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