AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

In Minnesota, the Hennepin County medical examiner has ruled the death of the 37-year-old VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti a homicide, due to multiple gunshot wounds. He was fatally shot by two Border Patrol agents January 24th. His killing comes just weeks after ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good, another 37-year-old. She was a 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis. On Friday, the Justice Department has announced it’s conducting a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death; however, the administration has refused to identify the agents involved. But over the weekend, ProPublica identified the men as Border Patrol agent Jesus “Jesse” Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez, both from Texas.

ProPublica reporter David McSwane joins us now from Washington, D.C.

David, thanks so much for being with us. Can you start off by talking about the decision of ProPublica to name the names? Now, of course, we do know the name of the agent who shot Renee Good, but we haven’t known these names, the two CBP agents.

J. DAVID McSWANE: Right. Well, this is a matter of intense public interest. We’ve all seen the videos. You know, more than a week had passed, and in the interim, we were asking questions of, you know, who are these officers involved in the shooting, that, you know, from various angles, I think we all have questions about who shot and how it escalated so quickly. And, you know, we came to the decision, when we were able to identify these officers, that this is in the public interest.

This country has a tradition and norm of being able to identify law enforcement officers, both for their safety and the safety of the public. And, you know, the shielding of agents, both in terms of the administration’s secrecy around them and their ability to wear masks, as we see these violent encounters in the streets, the first line of accountability would be, you know, for families to find any sort of accountability, would be to identify who those officers are, and, you know, for potential prosecutors and so forth, same thing. And we found out from state leaders in Minnesota that, you know, there was an intense frustration around just being able to figure out what happened and who was involved.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David, what were you able to learn about Ochoa and Gutierrez? When did they join the federal agency? And have there been any other incidents in their past of excessive use of force, or allegations at least?

J. DAVID McSWANE: It’s pretty hard to pin down details on agents. They are instructed to really scrub themselves from the internet. But we do know that both men hail from South Texas. Jesus Ochoa, age 43, joined in 2018. I’m told by his ex-wife in an interview that he had really aspired to be an agent for quite some time. And in that region, this is a pretty good job, a lot of — you know, a lot of folks very well-meaning. It’s got great benefits. That’s not uncommon. That didn’t surprise me. In terms of Raymundo Gutierrez, he is age 35. He joined a little bit earlier, 2014. So, we know that they’re not part of this most recent recruiting push with all of the money being funneled into Homeland Security. They have had some experience, though, certainly, you know, CBP’s mission before recent months was not to go into American cities and conduct these sorts of — these sort of sweeps.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And at a White House press briefing last month, Vice President JD Vance suggested ICE agents have “absolute immunity.” I’m wondering your response to this, this allegation by the vice president.

J. DAVID McSWANE: Well, I don’t know about absolute immunity. You know, there is a concept called qualified immunity. And I wrote a story back in April, towards the beginning of the Trump administration. One of the first things the administration did was wipe out the levers of accountability within Homeland Security, including the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office, which really would follow up on these claims and on allegations of wrongdoing internally, certainly would have looked at something like this and something like Pretti’s death and referred that to DOJ for potential criminal investigation. And, you know, that headline was a quote from one of the former lawyers in that office who had said, you know, “They don’t care about civil rights.” And that story essentially portended that in that environment, it’s really going to come down to whether or not a federal prosecutor is willing to prosecute a federal agent, because they do have qualified immunity if they are doing — you know, if these allegations transpire in the course of them following orders under the executive branch, doing their jobs, there’s an argument that, you know, they have immunity, and it’s going to be a federal matter. So, it is a really tricky area in terms of seeking accountability,

AMY GOODMAN: I was just struck in your piece, David, “A longtime resident of the Rio Grande Valley, [Jesse] Ochoa had for years dreamed of working for the Border Patrol.” According to his ex-wife — they split in 2021 — he had become a “gun enthusiast with about 25 rifles, pistols and shotguns, Angelica Ochoa said.” And I was wondering if you can comment on that, and also the previous piece you co-wrote, headlined “Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump Is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force.”

J. DAVID McSWANE: Sure. I don’t know what else I could really add to his ex-wife’s statements. They did have an acrimonious divorce. She did say to me that his demeanor really changed once he did become a Border Patrol agent, and they drifted apart for reasons, you know, unknown.

And in terms of the most recent article you mentioned, I did do — you know, I worked on a story really looking at — beginning in L.A., and certainly in Chicago and now Minneapolis, we see a rampant use of these so-called less lethal pepper balls and rubber bullets and pepper spray and that sort of thing. And their use has really been blatantly, you know, flagrantly in violation of the agency’s own rules and policing norms — for instance, firing at people’s heads and crotches, throwing tear gas into cars where there are children, using these launchers in ways that — you know, they’re meant to deploy a weapon into a crowd, but they’re hitting people and causing serious injury. And, you know, that story actually is relevant in what we saw with Alex Pretti’s death. That scene really escalates when a Border Patrol officer fires pepper spray at his face, causing disorientation. And, you know, several officers pile on. It’d be hard to imagine anyone in that scene really had their bearings of what’s going on as those noxious chemicals are floating around.

AMY GOODMAN: J. David McSwane, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative reporter at ProPublica. We will link to your new piece, the “Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting,” and your previous pieces, including “Trump’s Immigration Forces Deploy [so-called] 'Less Lethal' Weapons in Dangerous Ways, Skirting Rules and Maiming Protesters.”

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