California Republicans issue mixed and muted response to ICE shooting of Alex Pretti
California’s Republican politicians have stayed relatively quiet about a federal immigration agent’s shooting of Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti, even as his death roils both state and national politics.
Some of the state’s congressional Republicans and a handful of state lawmakers have made statements defending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Echoing President Donald Trump and other administration officials, they’ve blamed sanctuary city policies and Democrat’s rhetoric for the violence in Minneapolis and other cities where federal agents have swarmed in with aggressive enforcement policies.
Some have called for an independent investigation into the shooting, after high level officials of President Donald Trump’s administration initially offered accounts that conflicted with emerging video evidence.
But on the whole, it’s been notably quiet from Republicans, who usually serve as a vocal foil to Democrats who run the state. That quiet shows the political discomfort this week’s shooting, coming just two weeks after an immigration agent shot another Minneapolis resident, Renee Good, is causing for Republicans nationally.
Trump appeared to soften his hard-line stance toward Minneapolis this week, speaking to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, on the phone and suggesting he would “de-escalate a little bit,” on the operations there. Trump also promised an “honest and honorable” investigation, although federal officials have shown no willingness to share evidence with state law enforcement agencies.
Among congressional Republicans from California, Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, offered the most extensive comments, calling for officials from several enforcement agencies to testify in Congress.
“In line with President Trump’s call for a full investigation into this weekend’s tragic incident, I support the committee’s request for an oversight hearing with ICE, CBP, and USCIS,” Fong told the Sacramento Bee in an email. He criticized protesters, however, not ICE tactics, for the violence.
“All Americans deserve to exercise their constitutional right to peaceful protest.,” Fong said. “What we have seen in Minneapolis, however, has moved beyond peaceful into confrontation. Obstruction of law enforcement escalates danger for both officers and the public.”
No Republican elected official at California’s state or federal level appears to have issued a direct condemnation of the tactics ICE is using in Minneapolis, or a criticism of the administration’s initial response to the shootings, which was to label both Pretti and Good domestic terrorists. That’s in contrast to some Republican elected officials from other states, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said on his podcast that the administration “loses credibility” when officials immediately labeled protesters killed by ICE agents as terrorists.
Another Texas Republican, former House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, said he was “troubled” by the killings and said an investigation was needed to “both to get to the bottom of these incidents and to maintain Americans’ confidence in our justice system.” In Florida, state Sen. Ileana Garcia, the founder of the political group Latinas for Trump, had harsher criticism, telling The New York Times that Republicans needed to back down from the immigration crackdown or lose the midterm elections.
“It’s gone too far,” she told The Times. “What happened Saturday was abhorrent.”
Congressional Republicans’ mixed and muted response
Few of California’s nine Republican members of Congress had much to say about Pretti’s death and instead focused on debate over immigration itself.
Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, however, also called for an investigation.
“The loss of life in Minnesota is a tragedy. Like any lethal use of force incident involving law enforcement, there should be a thorough review of the facts,” he posted on X.
Calvert also said locally elected officials should drop the sanctuary policies they’ve implemented in order to avoid further confrontations with federal agents.
“Ending sanctuary state policies will reduce the need for federal law enforcement from going into communities and creating these situations,” he wrote in the post.
Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim, who will face Calvert in a primary in June, posted on X on Saturday that “our border is the first line of defense for American families & our national security.” She cited legislation she has introduced and supported “to secure every mile of our border, crack down on cartels, & keep our families safe.” It was not clear if she was posting in response to Pretti’s death.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, who heads the House’s immigration subcommittee, has not been in Washington recently. All California Republicans who were present voted last week to fund DHS through September 30, the end of the current fiscal year, a vote which came after an agent killed Good but before Pretti’s shooting.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, did not reply this week to requests for comment from The Bee. After last week’s vote, he said he backed the funding for DHS because it “delivers critical resources to the frontline agencies that protect our nation every day, including the Coast Guard, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), and TSA (Transportation Security Administration).”
The legislation “strengthens border security, bolsters disaster response, and supports public safety operations that Americans rely on in moments of crisis,” Kiley said. “Funding these core responsibilities is essential to keeping our communities safe and secure.”
Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which writes budget legislation. After the funding package vote, he appeared at a Capitol news conference and did not discuss the Minnesota situation. His office did not reply Tuesday to a request for comment.
After Trump spoke with Walz on Monday, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Escondido, posted Trump’s Truth Social message describing those events. In an accompanying post, Issa wrote that, “this is much-needed leadership from (Donald Trump) here. He’s taking charge and reaching out and keeping the focus where it should be: Enforcing the law, targeting criminals, and protecting America’s homeland.”
Before that, Issa had not posted on his official X account or issued a statement on his website about the shooting.
Trump administration officials like Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem initially suggested Pretti had sought to attack ICE agents.
Video evidence shows, instead, that Pretti, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs nurse, was filming a group of protesters and agents with his phone and went to help a woman who they’d knocked to the ground. An agent pepper sprayed him in the face, and then other agents wrestled him to the ground before gunshots rang out. Pretti carried a licensed firearm, but according to video analysis by The New York Times, does not seem to have made any effort to take it out of its holster before an agent shot him.
That Pretti was lawfully carrying a firearm has driven some division in Republican ranks. Officials, including Trump and U.S. Attorney for Central California Bill Essayli, have faced criticism from Second Amendment advocates for implying the handgun Pretti carried helped justify agents’ killing him.
State lawmakers largely quiet, until debate spills out in California senate
Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, who is running in a special election to complete the term of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, was among the first state-level Republicans to issue a statement, supporting ICE and saying Democrat politicians and activists were responsible for the violence in Minnesota in a Sunday evening post to X.
On Monday, in an interview with The Bee, he reiterated his belief that Democrats, including those in the Legislature, could spark more violence by referring to ICE agents as Nazis or outside the law.
“The idea that somehow these are bad actors and not really law enforcement,” he said, “that they’re thugs, is a ridiculous and dangerous statement. Just one that shouldn’t be made, and it’s contributing to the kind of chaotic environment that these guys find themselves in.”
State Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, also spoke to news outlets Monday, and largely put the blame on sanctuary city policies while not directly calling for an investigation into Pretti’s shooting.
“I don’t like what’s going on in the streets of Minnesota or across the country, just like everybody else,” Strickland told The Bee, “but we wouldn’t have this problem, if we didn’t have these sanctuary city and sanctuary state laws.”
The Republican vice chairs of both the Assembly and Senate public safety committees — Assemblymember Juan Alanis, R-Modesto and state Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta — declined to comment to The Bee through their spokespeople. Those committees handle legislation dealing with the state’s criminal code and often take on policing issues.
The social media accounts of other state Republican lawmakers, as well as that of the California Republican Party, were quiet on the shooting as of Tuesday afternoon. In contrast, the day before Pretti’s death, the California Republican Party shared on X a post about a letter threatening violence against ICE agents that Fox News reported had been received by some county-level party officials.
“Violent Democrats are at it again,” the party wrote in the post.
A spokesperson for the party did not respond to a request for an interview or comment on events in Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, the California Senate voted along party lines to advance a bill that allows state residents to sue federal law enforcement agents for injuring or killing protesters and other misconduct in the state. Senators spoke emotionally about the measure for nearly two hours, with Democrats in favor of the legislation dominating most of the speaking time. Several referred to ICE agents as “thugs,” put on the streets without proper training as the Trump administration rushed to enact a sweeping deportation agenda.
The bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who is also running for Congress, introduced the bill as an attempt to reign in “a fascist, authoritarian regime.” Of ICE, he said, “California is not going to let these thugs get away with it.”
Some Republicans pushed back on the bill and defended the agency.
Sen. Shannon Grove spoke most forcefully against the direction Democrats were taking.
“I’m going to try to turn down the rhetoric because I am not running for Congress,” she said, drawing a later rebuke from Senate leadership for the personal nature of the remark.
The Biden administration left the country in an immigration crisis, Grove said, and ICE agents have had to come into interior communities and arrest people as a result. Grove accused Good of trying to run over an ICE agent with her car, though video evidence also contradicts that claim. Of Pretti, she said that he should not have been carrying a gun.
“Don’t go to a protest and conceal a firearm,” she said. “That’s advice for everybody because you put yourself in jeopardy and everyone else around you in jeopardy.”
In a blog post made before the senator’s comments, but after Essayli and Trump drew heat from Second Amendment organizations for similar remarks, the group Gun Owners of California took an opposite stance.
“Let it be known that GOC unflinchingly believes Americans have a constitutional right to peacefully protest while armed, and that right should never be infringed by the federal government or its agents,” the group wrote. “At the same time, we recognize that the facts around what occurred in Minneapolis are still emerging and that there is not yet a complete, transparent public record of the sequence of events that led to this tragic shooting.”
An email and voicemail requesting further comment from the group was not returned by press time.
This story was originally published January 27, 2026 at 5:50 PM.
