WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY, AND THEY ARE OUR OWN S. TEXAS ICE

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

BREAKING: AT LAST! The CPB agents who killed Alex Pretti are FINALLY NAMED — and the cover-up looks worse by the day.

For weeks, the Trump administration hid behind masks, silence, and talking points.
Now the names are out.

Government records reviewed by ProPublica now identify the two federal agents who fired the shots that killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse gunned down during a chaotic federal sweep in Minneapolis. Their names are Jesus “Jesse” Ochoa, a Border Patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, a Customs and Border Protection officer.

Both were deployed under Operation Metro Surge, Trump’s aggressive immigration dragnet that sent armed, masked agents flooding American cities far from the border—and even farther from accountability.

The details matter.

Ochoa, 43, joined CBP in 2018 after years of wanting the job. According to his ex-wife, Angelica Ochoa, he graduated from the University of Texas–Pan American with a degree in criminal justice and spent much of his life in the Rio Grande Valley dreaming of becoming a Border Patrol agent. By the time the couple split in 2021, she said, he had become a gun enthusiast, owning roughly 25 rifles, pistols, and shotguns.

Gutierrez, 35, joined CBP in 2014 and works for the Office of Field Operations. He’s assigned to a special response team—a high-risk unit modeled after police SWAT teams. Records show both men were brought in from South Texas to enforce a crackdown that turned Minneapolis into a militarized zone.

CBP refused to release their names. DHS blocked state investigators. Body-camera footage remains hidden. And while Trump officials rushed to smear Pretti—branding him a threat and worse—video evidence shredded the official story.

(At right: Greg Bovino spotted in Downtown McAllen last night )

Footage shows Pretti calmly filming federal agents roaming a popular arts district. It shows a masked agent shoving a woman to the ground. It shows Pretti stepping in to help. It shows pepper spray blasted into his face, agents piling on, and then a volley of gunfire — around ten shots — as onlookers screamed.

Pretti was legally armed. Multiple analyses suggest an agent removed the gun from his hip before shots were fired, contradicting claims of imminent danger.

Only after days of protests and bipartisan outrage did the Justice Department announce a civil rights investigation. Even now, key evidence remains locked away.
This isn’t just about two agents.

It’s about a system that sends anonymous, heavily armed federal teams into U.S. cities, escalates encounters instead of defusing them, and then hides the truth when an American citizen ends up dead.

Alex Pretti had a name, a family, and a life devoted to caring for veterans.

The men who killed him tried to keep their identities secret.

Now that the masks are off, accountability can’t stop at identification. It has to climb the chain of command that made this tragedy possible.