Former DHS Secretary warns that border agents are unprepared for urban policing

Over the weekend, an investigative report from ProPublica identified the two federal immigration agents who fatally shot Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis. The report names Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection agent Raymundo Gutierrez.

Former Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano has been vocal about what appears to be a mismatch between the environments these agents are trained for and the environments they are now working in. MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with Napolitano.

The following has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation

Has the agency gotten too big to provide meaningful oversight?

I don't think it’s gotten too big to provide meaningful oversight. I think it’s not providing meaningful oversight. Part of the reason is that they have disbanded or disabled elements of the department that were designed to provide operational oversight.

For example, the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties division has basically gone away. So you have that effect, and then you have the unfortunate rhetoric that’s coming out of the actual leadership of the department, and frankly, agents in the field, they take their guidance from what their leaders are saying.

I mentioned one of the officers joined border patrol in 2018 the other in 2014. The report said both men are from South Texas. Are you surprised it was more experienced agents that were involved?

Well, the question is: What kind of training they got and what were their previous responsibilities? You know, when you work on the southern border, the border patrol works between the ports of entry. It’s a totally different environment. Their training is different. Their muscle memory, so to speak, is different than being thrust into an urban environment like in Minneapolis.

I have not heard any notice that there’s been any retraining, particularly in the area of how to how to deescalate intense situations, and how to handle yourself in an urban environment where the whole populace is involved.

Can you tell us a bit more about their typical training versus what is happening now in an urban environment?

I’m the former governor of Arizona and a former prosecutor in Arizona, which is a border state, and those areas between the ports of entry are very isolated. The geography is really tough, and you can, as a as a border patrol agent, pretty much assume that anyone you see crossing the border between a port of entry is crossing illegally and is subject to detention.

That is a far cry from being in an urban environment where you have lots of people who are intermingled. You have lawful immigrants, you have undocumented immigrants, you have immigrants that are in process, and then you have the overall native-born population. It’s a very different analysis that these agents should be trained to perform, and I don’t think they receive any training at all on how to handle large-scale protests.

When you were in charge of DHS, how would a fatal shooting of a citizen have been handled?

Well, first of all, we would not immediately have gone on the media and described the victims as a domestic terrorist or an insurrectionist or an anarchist or any of the other language that's unfortunately been used here.

We would announce that there would be an open, transparent investigation done by units that are experienced in use-of-force and civil-rights investigations, and those can include federal investigations. But in the context of what happened in Minneapolis, we would also coordinate with state and local investigators and prosecutors.

Are there protocols for taking agents off the street?

Oh, yes, whenever there would be a fatal shooting, in particular, those the agents involved would be immediately put on leave until the investigation could be completed.

Would you have put yourself in a situation where this would have been happening under your watch?

No. First of all, just the sheer size of the federal deployment is unreasonable given the circumstances. If your mission for this so-called surge is to find undocumented immigrants, the priority given to Minnesota is questionable. In terms of overall immigrant population, I think Minnesota is in the bottom 10 of states. It’s not where I would deploy thousands of federal agents and divert other federal resources, assistant U.S. attorneys, FBI, agents, etc., to do such a surge. And again, the lack of planning, and the lack of coordination with state and local departments, has helped result in the in the chaos and the situation that we’ve observed.

Are there takeaways that you think are good or is this all just looking like a mess to you?

Unfortunately, I think the federal government has created a mess here. And I think Tom Homan in particular is on point to help fix the situation. He’s going to have to reach out to the governor, to the mayor, to local law enforcement, and most important, he has to start giving real guardrails to the agents that are on the ground in Minneapolis, because the things that we have seen and the conduct that we’ve observed is just not the standard that we expect of federal law enforcement.

Do you think anything will change with Homan at the helm?

It remains to be seen whether things will change, because Holman has to report to the White House, and he has to report to Stephen Miller, and he has to report to President Trump. And it remains to be seen whether they have really changed their focus in Minneapolis.

The difference between Homan and Bovino is that Homan is an experienced career professional, and he comports himself that way, so you don't see the kind of performative preening on social media and the like that you saw from Bovino, which really just escalated and exacerbated the situation.

I think that in the end, what it’s going to require is greater White House involvement, different White House involvement, and clear and effective oversight by the Congress.