Tom Homan to manage ICE in Minnesota after Alex Pretti killing

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan will head to Minnesota to manage U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s on-the-ground operations there in the wake of Alex Pretti‘s killing by federal agents in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump and the White House said Monday.

“Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a separate social media post that Homan will coordinate with officials leading ongoing investigations into fraud schemes in Minnesota.

Trump’s post said Homan has not previously been involved in Minnesota, where thousands of federal agents have been deployed in recent weeks to carry out the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda.

Two U.S. citizens have been fatally shot in Minneapolis in less than a month in altercations with federal agents. The killings have stoked massive protests, heated denunciations of ICE from Democrats and pleas for de-escalation from business leaders.

Trump’s decision to give Homan control in Minnesota comes as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials face mounting criticism, including from gun rights groups and some conservatives, over their leadership and rhetoric in Minneapolis.

Fox News reported Sunday that some senior officials involved in immigration enforcement have “grown increasingly uneasy & frustrated [with] some of the claims & narratives DHS pushed” following the latest shooting.

Axios reported last month that Noem and Homan have a tense and acrimonious working relationship. Trump has praised both officials.

Noem, in a statement on X, said Trump’s decision to tap Homan for Minnesota is “good news for peace, safety, and accountability in Minneapolis.”

“I have worked closely with Tom over the last year and he has been a major asset to our team— his experience and insight will help us in our wide-scale fraud investigations, which have robbed Americans, and will help us to remove even more public safety threats and violent criminal illegal aliens off the of streets of Minneapolis,” Noem said.

“We continue to call on the leadership in Minnesota to allow for state and local partnership in our public safety mission,” she said.

Tensions in Minnesota have boiled over after the two killings by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 as she began to drive her SUV after another agent ordered her out of the car.

On Saturday, Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse in Minneapolis, was shot and killed by federal officers.

Both killings occurred in daylight in front of witnesses and were caught on video from multiple angles, massively ratcheting up the already-intense scrutiny over immigration agents’ tactics and training.

In both cases, numerous Trump administration officials rushed to defend the agents’ actions as justified, while making claims about the incidents that later analyses found were contradicted by the available video evidence.

On the same day that Pretti was killed, DHS claimed that he approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a handgun and, after they attempted to disarm him, “violently resisted.”

Noem echoed that statement. Later, Greg Bovino, Border Patrol commander at large, claimed Pretti may have been intending to “massacre law enforcement.”

But videos show Pretti holding up a phone as the confrontation begins. And the clips also appear to show one officer removing a weapon from Pretti’s person prior to any shots being fired.

Pretti was believed to be a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry his weapon, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a news conference.

Trump, asked by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday if he believed shooting Pretti was the right thing to do, did not directly answer.

“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump told the newspaper.