(Web Desk) - Federal agents in the United States have shot and killed another person in the city of Minneapolis amid an immigration crackdown, authorities said, spurring protests and fresh calls for President Donald Trump to immediately pull heavily armed officers out of the city.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told reporters a 37-year-old man died in hospital on Saturday after being shot multiple times. The man was a Minneapolis resident and a US citizen, O’Hara said.
The man’s parents identified him as Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse.
The deadly shooting took place amid a weeks-long deployment of US immigration enforcement and other federal agents to Minneapolis, where they have been carrying out raids as part of Trump’s anti-immigration push.
It happened amid widespread daily protests in Minneapolis since the January 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fired into her vehicle.
Federal agents also shot a Venezuelan man in a separate incident last week in the city.
“This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said during a separate news conference in Saint Paul, the state capital and Minneapolis’ twin city.
“It’s a campaign of organised brutality against the people of our state. And today that campaign claimed another life,” said Walz, pledging that Minnesota would handle the investigation into the killing.
The Department of Homeland Security said a US Border Patrol agent shot and killed a person who had a handgun and resisted attempts to be disarmed.
DHS 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.