After two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed in Minnesota earlier this month while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the incidents are raising questions about whether any federal agents involved could face charges.
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Vice President JD Vance has suggested that federal immigration officers have “absolute immunity” from prosecution — remarks he later walked back. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told Scripps News that she has the authority to charge anyone who commits a crime in her jurisdiction.
“My job as a prosecutor is to be as objective as I can,” Moriarty said. “It’s not to make conclusions the way the [Trump] administration has been, you know, making conclusions about what happened here. It is to collect all of the evidence and then see whether charges are appropriate.”
“I know the administration was saying for a period of time there was absolute immunity. That is simply not true,” she added. “That is not at all true. And we do have the authority and jurisdiction to charge.”
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Moriarty has filed a lawsuit against the federal government to force the preservation of any evidence related to cases she's investigating. She said her office has already received significant video evidence from citizens recording ICE operations in Minnesota.
Asked when she would decide whether to charge any federal agents, Moriarty emphasized that “each case is specific.”
“It depends on the complexity of the case. It depends on a lot of different factors,” she said. “So, I don’t want to mislead people and say I will, we will have a decision by X date. We will have a decision when we’re ready."
