Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who loved getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula Leopard dog who also recently died. He had participated in protests following the killing of Renee Good by a US Immigration and Customs Law Enforcement officer earlier this month.
"He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset," said Michael Pretti, Alex's father on Saturday.
"He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express that, you know, his care for others."
The US Department of Homeland Security said the Border Patrol agent fired in defence after attempting to disarm a man local police said was a US citizen. Federal officials said the man who was shot approached them with a handgun and two magazines.
"This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement," Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official leading local operations, said at a press conference.
Agents had been searching for an immigrant before the shooting. Bovino did not provide details of what led to the shooting, which he said was being investigated.
Tensions are rising between Democratic state and local officials who say the presence of thousands of immigration agents has made the Minneapolis area less safe, and Trump and other Republican leaders, who accuse Democrats of fanning opposition and failing to protect immigration agents.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the person was shot amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
He urged Trump to end what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.
"Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now," Walz said in a post on X.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said the man killed on Saturday was a 37-year-old city resident and a lawful gun owner with no criminal record other than traffic violations.
Video from the area later showed armed and masked agents deploying tear gas on a growing crowd of protesters, who chanted "shame" and called them "traitors."
Local and state police arrived to face off against the crowd as federal agents left the scene.
O'Hara asked people to avoid the area and said the site of the shooting was a "volatile scene."
"Please do not destroy our city," he said.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for an immediate end to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations in the state.
"How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?" Frey said at a press conference.
The state's governor and two US senators also called for federal agents to leave.
Trump, who has been briefed on the shooting, according to a White House official, accused local elected officials of stirring up opposition.
Vice President JD Vance, who visited Minneapolis on Thursday, posted on social media Saturday that ICE agents wanted to work with local law enforcement "so that situations on the ground didn't get out of hand.
"The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric," he wrote on social media.
The shooting came one day after more than 10,000 people took to the frigid streets to protest the presence of the 3000 federal agents who have been ordered to the state by Trump.
Residents have been angered by several incidents, including the killing of US citizen Renee Good, the detention of a US citizen who was taken from his home in his shorts, and the detention of school children, including a five-year-old boy.
Pretti was a US citizen, born in Illinois. Like Good, court records showed he had no criminal record and his family said he had never had any interactions with law enforcement beyond a couple of traffic tickets.
with Reuters
