Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump, has suggested that federal agents “may not have been following” protocol before the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, after days in which he and other Trump administration officials portrayed the shooting as justified.

Miller said in a statement that the White House had provided “clear guidance” to the Department of Homeland Security that federal agents deployed to Minnesota as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown be used to protect “arrest teams” from people he described as “disruptors.”

“We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol,” Miller said in the statement, referring to agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency under the department. The statement was provided to The New York Times on Wednesday by a White House spokesperson and was reported earlier by CNN.

While Miller did not elaborate, his comments came as the Trump administration faces escalating blowback for Pretti’s killing.

Miller Called Victim a ‘Domestic Terrorist’

Shortly after the shooting, Miller, the highly influential deputy White House chief of staff, characterized the 37-year-old Minneapolis resident in a social media post as a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents,” without providing evidence. He accused Democratic leaders who had condemned the killing of inciting insurrection.

Other Trump administration officials offered similar accounts. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Pretti had brandished a gun and appeared intent on inflicting “maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

A New York Times analysis of videos of the shooting contradicted those accounts. The analysis shows that Pretti was holding a phone — not a gun — when federal agents pinned him to the ground before shooting him. A preliminary review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office also did not say that Pretti had brandished a gun.

In his statement Wednesday, Miller said the Homeland Security Department’s initial assessment of the killing of Pretti was “based on reports from CBP on the ground.”

The Trump administration’s comments about the killing of Pretti, who worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Minneapolis, have stirred widespread public anger and prompted more protests in the city over the aggressive federal immigration crackdown.

Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that he might “de-escalate” the campaign but later, at a rally in Iowa, made incendiary remarks that falsely described thousands of people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota as “hardened, vicious, horrible criminals” and anti-ICE demonstrators as “paid insurrectionists.”

Trump and his aides have made similar justifications for the killing of Renee Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis woman fatally shot on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who the president said had acted in self-defense. Local and state officials in Minnesota have contested those accounts. A New York Times analysis of that shooting shows no indication that Ross had been run over.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Max Kim/Doug Mills
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