Obama Bashes Trump’s ‘Cruel’ and ‘Lawless’ Immigration Raids After Alex Pretti Shooting: ‘This Has to Stop’

(AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)

President Barack Obama slammed President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as “embarrassing, lawless and cruel” and said it has “resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens” in a statement posted on Sunday, one day after Border Patrol agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti.

Obama said the shooting of Pretti was a “heartbreaking tragedy” that should also serve as a ‘wake-up call to every American.” He said it proved America’s “core values” are “increasingly under assault” under Trump’s leadership, and that Trump’s use of ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minnesota has gone off the rails.

“For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke, and endanger the residents of a major American city,” Obama said.

The ex-president also pointed to the shooting of protester Renee Good earlier this month, which sparked a number of anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis and around the country. Obama then slammed the Trump administration for how it characterized the Pretti shooting.

Here is that key section of Obama’s statement:

These unprecedented tactics — which even the former top lawyer of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration has characterized as embarrassing, lawless, and cruel — have no resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens. And yet rather than trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed, the President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanations for the shooting of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren’t informed by any serious investigation — and that appears to be directly contradicted by video evidence.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a Saturday press conference that Pretti interfered with an operation to apprehend a violent illegal immigrant and intended to “kill law enforcement” with his 9 mm handgun. Noem said Border Patrol agents “fired defensive shots” to protect themselves from Pretti.

Critics promptly accused Noem of delivering an account of the incident that differed from the footage. CNN anchor Jake Tapper, responding to Noem, posted the video of the shooting and asked “Is that what you see?”

Obama does not appear to be buying Noem’s account, either, based on his statement.

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