From Newsgroup: alt.law-enforcement

PRESCOTT VALLEY u Arizona Republicans are standing by President Donald
TrumpAs immigration crackdown after a federal agent shot a second
protester in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a Border Patrol
agent during a protest there on Jan. 24.

oFAFO,o said Kingman activist Barbara Carpenter, 76, an acronym often used
by the White House, which stands for the phrase o(Expletive) around, find out.o

The Pretti shooting marked the latest escalation in TrumpAs immigration operation in Minneapolis, which is playing out in dramatic clashes between protesters and federal agents on the streets of the Minnesota city.

Department of Homeland Security officials said the Pretti, a VA nurse, had approached officers with a handgun and an officer fired odefensive shotso after Pretti resisted an attempt to disarm him.

However, video circulating on social media appeared to show officers had disarmed Pretti before he was shot. Pretti was a U.S. citizen with a
license to carry a firearm, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian OAHara.

An ICE agent shot and killed Minneapolis protester Renee Nicole Good some
17 days earlier.

Immigration issues top of mind at Arizona GOP meeting
Roughly 1,600 miles away, Republicans gathered at the Findlay Toyota
Center in Prescott Valley for the state Republican PartyAs annual
mandatory meeting.

Immigration was top of mind for border state Republicans who spoke with
The Republic in interviews during the meeting. They voiced support for
federal immigration agents and said theyAd like to see more undocumented immigrants deported, a promise Trump had made on the campaign trail.

Protesters are getting in the way of ICE agents doing their jobs, said Carpenter, a Republican activist and retiree who lives in Kingman. She
serves as the secretary for the Kingman Republican Women and the second
vice chair for the Mohave County Republican Central Committee.

oIAm sorry, theyAre trying to do their job. Let them do their job. Stay
home, stay out of the way. Then you wonAt have people that arenAt supposed
to be involved in this getting in trouble. TheyAre doing it to
themselves,o said Carpenter, who is also a state committee member and
works in the GOP office in Kingman.

Leigh Collins, the first vice chair in Arizona's 8th legislative district, echoed that view.

oAnybody whoAs been maced, how do you get maced? Because youAre in their
face. IAm sorry, if youAre at home and not interfering, you donAt get
maced,o Collins said. oLet them do their job. TheyAre just federal workers doing what theyAve been asked to do.o

DHS, which oversees the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, has deployed thousands of agents to Minneapolis in recent
weeks. The Trump administration called oOperation Metro Surgeo its largest operation ever.

oIAm 100% behind ICE because I think that if Biden hadnAt had the borders open, we wouldnAt have to have all this going on. And if all the blue
states would do their job instead of harboring them and have sanctuary
cities, ICE wouldnAt need to go in,o Collins said.

Trump accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey,
both Democrats, of inciting insurrection and called on police to protect
ICE officers in a Truth Social post that included a photo of PrettiAs gun.

oWhere are the local Police? Why werenAt they allowed to protect ICE
Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that
many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to
protect themselves u Not an easy thing to do!o Trump said. oThe Mayor and
the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!o

Joe Reyes, a 74-year-old retired risk manager who lives in Fountain Hills, said places like Minneapolis and his former home state of California owant
to impede progress.o

oThey do everything to make things difficult and then they continue to
want to be throwing stones at Trump, saying heAs not doing anything, doing
the wrong things, and on and on and on. Bottom line is, the results speak
for themselves. And if itAs going to take a little inconvenience to get
that level of results, I and many others are all-in,o Reyes said. oAfter
all, we, the American public at large throughout the U.S., we put him in office to do the things that heAs doing now.o

Some people at the GOP meeting said they were suspicious about the
backgrounds of protesters in Minneapolis.

oIf somebody blocks traffic for hours, like that gal did that got shot,
she was not just a common citizen. I donAt know if she was paid to be
there, but the news ought to tell us that,o said Steve Billheimer, 73, of Tucson.

Billheimer hadnAt seen the latest shooting but said he suspected the
person killed had been paid to protest and would like to see the press investigate his background. There hasnAt been any evidence that Good or
Pretti were being paid to protest DHS agents.

Former Yuma County Republican Committee Chair Greg Wilkinson is originally from Minnesota and has family and friends who live in Minneapolis. He
compared the city with Memphis, another city that has been the target of
ICE enforcement.

He echoed Trump and said he was frustrated that Walz and Frey werenAt
allowing local police to work with Trump.

oMinneapolis is fighting this, instead of letting their law enforcement
work with them,o said Wilkinson, who is a retired lieutenant colonel in
the Marine Corps. oI wish nobody would get killed, but like what happened today, when you pull a gun on an ICE officer, well.o

Nicolle Wilkinson, his wife, agreed. She has had one of the largest
womenAs gun clubs in Arizona for a decade, she said.

oA permit to carry does not give you the right to pull a gun on a law enforcement officer. It just doesnAt,o Nicolle Wilkinson said.

She also criticized Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who said
recently ArizonaAs oStand Your Groundo law could lead to shootouts with
masked ICE agents who are unable to be identified.

oTheyAre going to get more people killed,o Nicolle Wilkinson said of
Mayes.

The aftermath of the Pretti shooting also teed up a fight on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to fund the
government past Jan. 30.

That includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Sens. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, said heAll vote against the DHS budget in the wake of PrettiAs death.

oWe are better than this. We can enforce our laws without this chaos and federal agents killing people in the streets,o Kelly said on X. oIAm going
to do everything I can to stop TrumpAs deployment of federal law
enforcement against American cities. That starts with voting no on DHSAs budget this week.o

Carpenter, the GOP activist from Kingman, disagreed with KellyAs comments.

oHeAs anti-American,o Carpenter said. oWe have to be a country of laws,
and we need to follow them.o

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2026/01/25/arizona- republicans-say-fafo-after-alex-pretti-shooting/88344547007/

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