Six Months After ICE Killed Two Minnesotans —
Federal Prosecutors Finally Handed Over the Evidence.
Six months after federal immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens and wounded a third during “Operation Metro Surge,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota has handed state investigators the evidence it spent half a year refusing to share. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty (D) announced on July 13, 2026 that the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security turned over hard drives containing agent statements and body-worn-camera footage, along with physical custody of the SUV Renée Good was driving when an ICE officer shot her dead in January.
The handover covers three separate shootings by federal agents inside a single eighteen-day stretch of Operation Metro Surge: the killing of Good, 37; the killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti, 37; and the wounding of Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national shot through his own front door. Only one of the three officers involved has been criminally charged.
The breakthrough followed a federal lawsuit Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) filed in March accusing DOJ and DHS of stonewalling state investigators — a fight that began the day after Good’s death, when the FBI revoked state investigators’ access to the scene. Federal officials still have not confirmed that a formal, signed cooperation agreement exists, and the lawsuit remains active even with the hard drives now in state hands.
- 6 months — how long Minnesota investigators went without access to federal evidence in the Good and Pretti shootings · Source: Hennepin County Attorney's Office; Washington Examiner
- 3 shootings — by federal agents in an 18-day span of Operation Metro Surge — Good and Pretti killed, Sosa-Celis wounded · Source: Star Tribune; CBS Minnesota
- $200,000 — bail set for ICE officer Christian Castro, the only one of the three officers criminally charged · Source: Texas Tribune; CNN
- 0 charges — filed against the officers who killed Renée Good or Alex Pretti, as of this writing · Source: Star Tribune; Washington Post
- 4 counts — against Castro — four of second-degree assault, one of falsely reporting a crime · Source: Star Tribune
Moriarty said the handover — which took effect roughly two weeks before her announcement — came “through the cooperation of our federal partners,” and covers agent statements and body-worn-camera footage from all three shootings, plus the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s first physical access to Good’s SUV since January. The exchange was reciprocal: Minnesota, in turn, shared its own evidence in the Castro case with federal prosecutors.
“Through the cooperation of our federal partners we have obtained the hard drives of previously withheld evidence in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis. We need transparency. We need cooperation. Our community needs it.”
Mary Moriarty (D), Hennepin County Attorney — press conference, July 13, 2026
The feds are finally sharing evidence in the Renée Good and Alex Pretti shootings. This took way too long, and it's not enough.
What the handover is not: a signed, public agreement. A lawyer for Pretti’s family told reporters the U.S. Attorney’s Office would not confirm that any formal “cooperation agreement” exists in writing, and Ellison called the six-month wait “troubling” even as he welcomed the evidence itself. Moriarty said the analysis of the newly obtained material is “ongoing,” and promised it would be “thorough, fair, and complete.”
Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale ICE and Border Patrol deployment to Minneapolis-St. Paul, began in December 2025. On the morning of January 7, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officer Jonathan Ross — not officially named by DHS but identified through court records by the Star Tribune, CNN, and the Washington Post — fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was acting as a citizen observer, as her SUV pulled away from him on Portland Avenue South.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the same day that Good had “weaponized her vehicle in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to federal law enforcement.” Video reviewed by BBC, Reuters, AP, and ABC News does not support that account. The FBI revoked the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s access to the scene the next morning — the opening move in the six-month standoff that only just ended.
DHS's same-day account of the encounter that killed Renée Good, describing her as having weaponized her vehicle against federal officers — an account video reviewed by multiple outlets does not support.
One week later, on January 14, ICE officer Christian Castro shot Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg through his own front door in north Minneapolis, claiming Sosa-Celis had attacked him with a snow shovel — a claim city surveillance video contradicted. Ten days after that, on January 24, CBP/Border Patrol officers identified by ProPublica, MPR News, and FOX 9 as Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez fatally shot Alex Pretti, a VA Minneapolis ICU nurse, at Nicollet Avenue and West 26th Street after he intervened when an agent shoved a female protester. Video shows agents removed Pretti’s holstered handgun before shots were fired; the Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide on February 2.
…agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist… stock has gone way down… screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle.
On Alex Pretti, whose death the county medical examiner ruled a homicide
A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.
X’s Community Notes flagged Miller’s post as misleading, citing the same video showing Pretti’s gun stayed holstered until an agent removed it. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem (R) and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller both publicly called the Good and Pretti deaths acts of domestic terrorism; Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who led the Minneapolis surge, was pulled from the city soon after, and Tom Homan was sent in as “border czar” to take over.
The fight over access started almost immediately. The FBI revoked the BCA’s evidence access the morning after Good’s death; on January 12, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division declined to open a constitutional investigation, and Ellison separately sued DHS seeking to end the Metro Surge deployment altogether. Six weeks later, on February 16, the BCA was denied access again — this time to evidence in the Pretti case.
“Concerning and unprecedented.”
BCA Superintendent Drew Evans, on the FBI's second refusal to grant state investigators evidence access, February 2026
In early March, Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was grilled by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) over the shootings and the withheld evidence. President Donald Trump (R) fired Noem as DHS Secretary days later, on March 5, and named then-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to replace her; Mullin was sworn in March 24 and remains DHS Secretary today. The firing was over broader friction inside the department, not a resolution of the Minnesota evidence fight, which continued regardless of who held the office.
“Much more needs to be done — and I will be working to get more answers at the hearing this week.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), March 2026
With the stonewalling still unresolved, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the State of Minnesota, and the BCA sued DOJ and DHS on March 24, represented pro bono by the Washington Litigation Group and Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. The suit was amended with additional detail on June 18. Ellison put the six-month delay plainly.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says the federal government's withholding of evidence has contributed to violent crime going unaddressed in the community.
“I remain deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators. It should never have taken this long for Minnesota law enforcement to gain access to the federal government's evidence surrounding these incidents.”
Keith Ellison (D), Minnesota Attorney General — July 13, 2026
Of the three officers involved, only Castro faces criminal charges: four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime, filed by Hennepin County in May. Texas Rangers arrested him in Harlingen on May 29 on the Minnesota warrant, and a Cameron County judge set bail at $200,000. Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) formally asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) on June 5 to extradite Castro to Minnesota; as of this writing, Castro is contesting extradition. He is charged, not convicted, and is entitled to a presumption of innocence.
Ross, who killed Good, has not been criminally charged; Moriarty’s office says its review of the newly obtained evidence is just beginning, with no charging timeline set. Ochoa and Gutierrez, who killed Pretti, have likewise not been charged and have never been officially named by CBP — their identities come solely from independent reporting citing government records. Naming them here is not an assertion of guilt; it reflects what investigators and journalists have documented publicly, with the criminal process, if any, still ahead.
The underlying federal lawsuit over the withheld evidence has not been dismissed; Moriarty and Ellison say they intend to keep it active until they are satisfied the record is complete. Operation Metro Surge itself formally ended February 12, when Homan announced roughly 700 agents would begin withdrawing from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Six months later, the deployment is over. The accounting for what happened during it is not.
Federal agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti and wounded Julio Sosa-Celis in eighteen days of Operation Metro Surge, and it took Minnesota investigators six months — a federal lawsuit, two denied evidence requests, and a Senate hearing — to get the hard drives DOJ and DHS finally handed over on July 13, 2026. Only one of the three officers, Christian Castro, has been charged, and he is contesting extradition. Ross, Ochoa, and Gutierrez remain uncharged. The lawsuit over the withholding is still open, and even now, federal prosecutors won’t confirm they signed anything.
