U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media while walking to Marine One before departing from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, during a trip to Iowa, January 27, 2026.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants a “very honorable and honest investigation” into the controversial killing of ICU nurse Alex Preti by federal agents in Minnesota over the weekend.
“We’re conducting a massive investigation,” President Trump told reporters at the White House.
“I want to keep an eye on the investigation,” he said. “I want to see it myself.”
Shortly after Trump’s speech, MS Now reported, citing three people briefed on the matter, that the Justice Department had decided not to conduct a civil rights investigation into Preti’s death.
“And instead, two units of the Department of Homeland Security will investigate the officers and the men they killed,” MS Now reported.
Trump’s comments are the latest in a series of recent statements and moves by the president and the White House to walk back his administration’s initially combative statements about Preeti’s killing in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Preti’s death came weeks after a city Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed another American, Renee Good, as she tried to drive away after being told to get out of her car.
On Monday, President Trump said Tom Homan, his administration’s border czar, would travel to Minnesota to manage ICE’s field operations there.
Homan is reportedly at odds with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who initially called Preti a “domestic terrorist” who wants to “inflict maximum harm on individuals and kill law enforcement.”
“Tom Homan is… in Minnesota right now, meeting with the governor (Tim Walz), meeting with the mayor (Jacob Frey), I think later,” Trump said. “And I hear everything is going very well.”
President Trump spoke by phone with Walz and Frei on Monday. Both officials are Democrats and have for weeks strongly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to increase the number of immigration enforcement officers in cities such as Minneapolis.
On Monday, multiple news outlets reported that Border Patrol Gen. Greg Bovino was leaving Minneapolis, where his comments about Preti’s death and other immigration-related issues have heightened tensions.
Bovino had argued that Pretti, who was carrying a licensed handgun during the confrontation with federal agents, may have intended to “massacre law enforcement.”
Noem and Bovino’s claims are undermined by the video of Preti’s shooting. The video shows him falling to the ground, apparently shot in the back by an agent.
