WASHINGTON: The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump did not want to see anyone hurt on US streets but quickly blamed Democrats again after anti-immigrant agents killed a second person in Minneapolis.
“Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
She described the shooting death of Alex Pretti — whom a Trump aide had quickly and without evidence branded a “domestic terrorist” — by federal agents on Saturday as a “tragedy.”
“We mourn for the parents. As a mother myself, of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life,” she said.
But the conciliatory tone was short-lived. Leavitt quickly blamed the rival Democratic Party for unrest that has broken out since Trump ordered a surge in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), masked and armed agents deployed in force against local wishes.
“This tragedy occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota,” Leavitt said, blaming Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats.
She accused elected Democrats of “spreading lies about federal law enforcement officers who are risking their lives daily to remove the worst criminal illegal aliens from our streets.”
She demanded that Walz, to whom Trump spoke by telephone on Monday, and Frey fully cooperate with federal agents and “turn over all illegal aliens” detained by local authorities.
Pretti had a permit to carry a gun, although video footage did not show him taking out his weapon before ICE agents appeared to shoot him multiple times.
Trump’s Republican Party long has defended the right to carry weapons virtually without restriction, and Leavitt said Trump supports the right to bear arms.
But she added: “Any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk, and the risk of force being used against you.”
“That’s unfortunately what took place on Saturday,” she said.
Trump doesn’t want Americans hurt but blames Democrats: White House
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Trump doesn’t want Americans hurt but blames Democrats: White House
- The White House described the shooting death of Alex Pretti by federal agents on Saturday as a “tragedy”
Sudanese man jailed in UK for murdering asylum hotel worker
- Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024
- He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker was jailed on Friday for a minimum of 29 years for murdering a woman who worked at the hotel in central England where he and other migrants were being housed.
Anti-immigration activists have seized on other criminal cases involving asylum seekers, predominantly young men, in hotels to argue that they are a danger to nearby communities.
Last summer, a number of protests at asylum hotels across England – sparked by the arrest of an Ethiopian asylum seeker for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman – turned violent.
The Labour government, nervous of the rise of the anti-immigration Reform UK party in opinion polls, has promised to clamp down on illegal immigration and, by 2029, to stop placing asylum seekers in hotels while their cases are processed.
Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024 after she finished her shift.
He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver. She died in hospital three days later.
Majek was convicted in October and sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment with a minimum of 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, where some anti-immigration protesters gathered outside for the hearing.
Judge Michael Soole said the murder was “particularly vicious” and told Majek there had been a “chilling composure in every aspect of your behavior.”
