Experts say the divide between Minnesota and federal authorities is unprecedented

A new Minnesota website lays out evidence to counter what officials have called federal misinformation after immigration agents fatally shot two residents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, deepening an unprecedented divide, experts said Monday.

Minnesota also went to court to preserve evidence from the Saturday shooting of Alex Pretti after its own investigators were blocked from the scene by federal authorities.

Experts say the line being drawn between Minnesota and the U.S. government goes against years of cooperation between local and federal agencies on law enforcement missions.

But they also said the state’s hand has been forced by an administration that has acted against decades of practice — from declining to allow state officials access to evidence gathered by federal authorities to barring its own Civil Rights division from probing the shootings of Pretti and Renee Good, who was shot to death by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7.

Former federal prosecutors under Republican and Democratic presidential administrations said the divide was deeply troubling, though a call Monday between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and President Donald Trump may signal a way forward after both expressed that progress was made.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections launched a website its leaders said was dedicated to combatting Department of Homeland Security misinformation after Pretti was killed. The site includes examples where Minnesota officials honored federal requests to hold people under deportation orders to refute the Trump administration claim that those people are routinely allowed to go free.

Department officials also published videos showing peaceful transfers of custody from prison to federal authorities of several individuals the Trump administration had claimed were arrested by immigration agents as part of the ongoing immigration enforcement action.

The department also issued a news release trying to dispel federal claims about the criminal records of people sought by federal agents, including the person at the center of an operation Saturday near where Pretti was shot. The release said the department never had custody of the man and could only find decade-old misdemeanor traffic-related violations. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino had said at a news conference Saturday that the man had a significant criminal history.

Jimmy Gurulé, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said he saw turf battles and other disagreements when he was a federal prosecutor working with local authorities on task forces in Los Angeles, and again when he was an undersecretary at the U.S. Treasury Department overseeing law enforcement operations under George W. Bush. But, he said, the situation in Minnesota is “unprecedented” in his experience.

“The disagreements were always handled behind the scenes. There were never any public statements criticizing other agencies,” Gurulé said.

“It's not even a question of collaboration at this point. It's such a broken relationship," he said. "How did it get to this point, where state and local law enforcement have such little trust in the federal agencies they feel they need to go to court?"

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office filed a lawsuit in federal court after the shooting Saturday seeking to preserve evidence collected by federal officials from the Pretti shooting. A federal judge granted a motion blocking the Trump administration from “destroying or altering evidence.”

Federal officials called the lawsuit and claims the federal government would destroy evidence “ridiculous.”

But state officials are not alone in having concern over a departure from decades of standard practice, which has been the Department of Justice and its Civil Rights Division investigating the constitutionality of an officer's use of force, especially when fatal. DHS officials have instead said their own department would investigate the two Minneapolis shootings.

“What you would expect in normal times is the Justice Department would open an investigation into the circumstances of the shooting,” said Chris Mattei, a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “They have been the independent body that would investigate it. But it would seem that this Justice Department and this Civil Rights division have zero interest in enforcing constitutional rights for citizens in the immigration context.”

Mattei, now a partner at the Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder law firm that represents several former FBI employees in lawsuits over their terminations, said under Trump it appears the justice department doesn't want to change the wide latitude agents have been given to conduct immigration enforcement.

“These are career investigators,” he said. “They may have different opinions on how to pursue an investigation or how certain evidence should be handled. But usually in my experience they have the same objective to conduct a credible investigation."

Gurulé called the state lawsuit, specifically the motion over preserving evidence, “shocking.”

“The implication was they are not just keeping evidence from them but possibly destroying it,” he said. “Clearly the state attorney general and the Minneapolis police have grave distrust with ICE and DHS. Clearly there are strong disagreements with the tactics that ICE has used.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Monday moved to distance President Trump from statements made by deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller characterizing Pretti as an assassin, saying the situation had moved quickly since Saturday and noting Trump had never used those words.

Gurulé said statements like that erode the public's confidence that investigations are impartial.

“You don’t express your conclusion before an investigation and make it public. That is unheard of and upside down,” he said.

In his call with Trump, Walz's office said the governor made the case for an impartial investigation of the shootings and that Trump had agreed to talk to DHS about ensuring state investigators would be able to conduct an independent investigation.

Trump and Walz also discussed working in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement. The governor's office reiterated the state would continue honoring requests to hold incarcerated individuals who are not U.S. citizens until federal authorities can take them into custody.

This story has been updated to correct that the lawsuit to preserve evidence was filed by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office. The story incorrectly reported that the Minnesota Attorney General was a plaintiff.

Federal immigration officers walk away after knocking on a door Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

A demonstrator holds a sign reading "ICE OUT" during a protest outside the office of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Six people died when a business jet crashed during takeoff as a snowstorm moved in and visibility diminished in Maine Sunday night.

The Bombardier Challenger 600 flipped over and burned on takeoff at Bangor International Airport around 7:45 p.m. Sunday night as the nation’s massive winter storm was beginning to reach the area.

An audio recording of air traffic controllers posted by www.LiveATC.net includes someone saying “Aircraft upside down. We have a passenger aircraft upside down,” about 45 seconds after a plane was cleared for takeoff. First responders arrived less than a minute later, airport director Jose Saavedra said.

Experts say the weather and questions about whether ice accumulating on the wings kept the plane from getting airborne — as has happened at least twice before on that plane model — will likely be an initial focus by the National Transportation Safety Board. However, the agency will consider all possible factors.

“You can count on the fact that NTSB is going to look very closely at this,” said John Cox, who is CEO of Safety Operating Systems.

The airport said Monday afternoon there were six people aboard, according to the flight manifest, and all died. Earlier in the day, the Federal Aviation Administration had said seven died and one was injured but warned the numbers were subject to change, and the agency defers to local authorities.

Snowfall was heavy elsewhere at the time of the crash, but accumulation had just started in Bangor. Other planes had been taking off safely. But about half an hour before the crash, the pilot of a Florida-bound Allegiant plane radioed the tower to abort his takeoff.

“One, our deice fluid has failed and two, I don’t think the visibility is good enough for us to go, so we’re going to have to taxi back to the gate here,” the Allegiant pilot radioed. The controller responded by saying he was just getting ready to warn the pilot that visibility had dropped to about three-quarters of a mile.

At about the same time, the pilot of the Bombardier had taxied over to the deicing pad and was radioing in a request to get his plane's wings and tail treated, according to audio posted by www.LiveATC.net. The plane remained at the deicing pad for about 20 minutes before taxiing to the runway.

The Bombardier Challenger 600 model “has a history of problems with icing on takeoff” that caused previous deadly crashes in Birmingham, England; and Montrose, Colorado, more than 20 years ago, aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti said. Even a little bit of ice on the wings can cause serious problems, so careful inspections and de-icing are a crucial step before takeoff, the former federal crash investigator said. And there is a time limit on how long de-icing remains effective. It could last only about 20 minutes.

The National Weather Service in Caribou, Maine, said the airport eventually received nearly 10 inches of snow, but it was just beginning to fall at the time of the crash. Wind speeds were about 10 mph, which is not out of the ordinary. Temperatures dropped below 3 degrees (minus 16 Celsius) while the jet was in Bangor.

Cox said those conditions wouldn't keep planes from flying.

The plane that crashed had just landed at Bangor from Houston at 6:09 p.m., according to FlightRadar24.com, so it would have likely been sitting outside in the snow for more than an hour before it tried to takeoff again. And it wouldn’t have taken long for ice to start building up on the wings — particularly if the plane was refueled with cold jet fuel that’s stored in wing tanks, a factor the NTSB has cited in previous crashes.

“Given the weather conditions at the time, and the history of wind contamination with this particular aircraft, I’m sure that’s something the NTSB is going to look into immediately,” Guzzetti said. “If there was any kind of precipitation at all, freezing precipitation, they would have needed to clean off those wings before they took off.”

The Bombardier Challenger 600 is a wide-bodied business jet configured for nine to 11 passengers. It was launched in 1980 as the first private jet with a “walk-about cabin” and remains a popular charter option, according to aircharterservice.com.

Crash investigators in England recommended improved procedures for ice detection after a 2002 crash, but significant changes weren't made until after the NTSB finished its investigation in 2006 of the Colorado crash that killed the son of NBC television executive Richard Ebersol.

The FAA published new rules afterward to make clear to pilots and airports that even a small amount of frost on the wings can be a problem. The agency also clarified the standards for de-icing to make certain that all frozen particles are removed from the wings, and it required a combination of tactile and visual inspections.

Bombardier was also required to add a cold weather operations warning to the plane's flight manual after three incidents in Canada where one of these planes rolled unexpectedly in ways the pilot didn't command during take offs in cold weather and icing conditions.

The planemaker said it has delivered more than 1,000 of Challenger 600s, and the plane is designed to be safe. Bombardier said it is deeply saddened by the crash and will work with investigators to determine what happened.

The identities of those onboard won’t be released publicly until they can be confirmed, officials said.

The jet was registered to a corporation that shares the same address in Houston as the personal injury law firm Arnold and Itkin Trial Lawyers, and one of the law firm’s founding partners is listed as the registered agent for the company that owns the plane.

The international airport in Bangor, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Boston, is one of the closest in the U.S. to Europe and is often used to refuel private jets flying overseas. The Bombardier was headed for France when it crashed.

The airport shut down after the crash and will remain closed at least until Wednesday so the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigators can examine and remove the wreckage.

A preliminary report outlining the facts of the crash should be released in about a month, but the final version likely won't be published for more than a year.

Ramer contributed to this report from Concord, New Hampshire; and Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

This image taken from video provided by WABI television, emergency services work on a scene of the Bombardier Challenger 600 crash at the Bangor Airport in Maine, late Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (WABI via AP)