FBI Formally Denies Minnesota BCA Access to Any Evidence in Alex Pretti Killing; BCA Superintendent Evans: 'Never Encountered' Federal Evidence Blockade in 20-Plus Years

The FBI formally notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) that it would not provide the BCA with any information or evidence collected in the January 24, 2026 killing of Alex Pretti by CBP agents during Operation Metro Surge.

BCA Superintendent Drew Evans stated: “In my 20-plus years at the BCA, prior to 2026, I had never encountered a situation in which federal authorities blocked BCA access to an incident where there is concurrent federal and state jurisdiction.”

The BCA stated it would “proceed independently” but acknowledged it remained “committed to thorough, independent and transparent investigations of these incidents, even if hampered by a lack of access to key information and evidence.”

The FBI evidence denial applied to the Pretti case specifically; the BCA was similarly denied access to evidence in the Renee Good killing (January 7, 2026) and the Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis shooting. The complete evidence blockade across all three Operation Metro Surge shooting cases effectively prevented any state prosecution of the involved federal agents — as demonstrated by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s later April 2026 statement that the only case where state charges were possible (ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., for pointing a gun on a highway) was the case where state investigators had independent access.

Note on date: The Minnesota Reformer brief (cited by Worker I’s state-lockout research note) gives February 13 as the date; the Spokesman-Review/AP coverage gives February 16. The discrepancy may reflect the FBI’s internal decision date (Feb 13) versus the formal BCA notification or public statement date (Feb 16). Entry dated at the confirmed public announcement date (Feb 16); the Feb 13 date in the Minnesota Reformer brief was not independently verified in this research pass (URL returned 403).

This evidence denial is Case 3 in the three-case state-lockout pattern documented in renee-good-fbi-takeover-state-lockout-pattern: Martinez (Chicago, Oct 2025), Good (Minneapolis, Jan 7 2026), Pretti (Minneapolis, Jan 24 2026). It followed Rodney Scott’s February 12, 2026 HSGAC testimony confirming that CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility — the institutional successor to the disbanded CIT cover-up teams — was conducting “collection and preservation of evidence” in the Pretti case.