Minnesota ICE official Sam Olson urged demonstrators in the Twin Cities on Sunday to keep protests peaceful following recent fatal federal agent-involved shootings in Minneapolis — unrest he described as “like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“When we’re out there, we have no problem with the public watching what we do, filming what we do, talking to us while we do it, but there is that line, though, when they start to impede and get in situations where, frankly, we don’t want them to be, we can’t have them to be, kind of in our workspace,” he told “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“That’s when we have issues,” he added.
BONDI BLAMES MINNEAPOLIS LEADERS AFTER ARMED SUSPECT KILLED, UNREST ERUPTS DURING ICE OPERATION
Olson, the ICE field office director in St. Paul, made the remarks on the heels of a second deadly shooting involving a federal agent on Saturday.
This time, Border Patrol opened fire and killed 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti, prompting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to defend the federal agent’s move as an act of self-defense.
The incident marks the second deadly shooting involving federal agents in Minnesota this month.
Pretti’s parents reacted to the news Saturday, saying they are “heartbroken but also very angry,” and condemned the version of events presented by law enforcement as “sickening lies.”
Olson called the incident “unfortunate” during his Fox News appearance.
“No officer wakes up in the morning and hopes to have to use any type of force, let alone deadly force, and now this happened,” he said.
“Again, this happened because of kind of what we’re seeing around here with a lot of these agitators, these vigilantes kind of surrounding the officers on the street.”
