MINNEAPOLIS — An alarming question remains unanswered after the deaths of Minnesotans Renee Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year:

Does the United States now have a federal immigration force that can kill Americans in front of the public yet operates beyond accountability’s reach?

Good, a 37-year-old mom and poet, and Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, were fatally wounded during encounters with federal immigration agents in Minneapolis during the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge. More than two months later, the three agents involved have faced few if any public consequences.

No charges have been filed. It’s also unclear if any other mechanism of accountability has been brought to bear. Questions that remain unanswered by their agencies: Have they faced any discipline? Are they back on the job, and if so, where? If quiet reassignment is all that has happened after the Minnesotans’ deaths, it is an affront to their families and to anyone who believes that taking a life should carry consequences.

The two agents identified as involved in Pretti’s death were U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents. The agent who allegedly shot Good worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The unanswered question about their whereabouts takes on added urgency as the Trump administration deploys ICE agents to relieve passenger-screening backups at some U.S. airports.

While ICE has not been deployed to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, I can’t help wondering if the ICE agent seen on video shooting Good, and who may have spewed a profane, dehumanizing slur about her afterward, could be assisting in another airport. I have reservations about this agent being in a position of authority in this situation, and I’d guess others might, too.

I asked ICE and Homeland Security recently where the agent is now working, and specifically whether he’s assigned to an airport. Neither responded to my request last week.

I asked CBP for similar information about the two agents involved in Pretti’s death. CBP did respond. But spokesperson Hilton Beckham didn’t address my questions. Instead he strongly implied my inquiry was an attempt to “dox” the agents, putting them at risk.

It’s important to note that the names of local police officers are typically made public after fatalities. Also, it wasn’t two federal officers who suffered mortal wounds in Minneapolis, but two members of the public who died in encounters with them. Who needs protection from whom is a question that answers itself.

Outrageously, information about the agents’ status isn’t just unavailable to the public. It’s also being actively withheld from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), the state agency responsible for investigating officer-involved shootings here.

I sounded the alarm about the lack of cooperation with the BCA in a Feb. 24 column. Nothing has changed. “We have not received any of the information we are seeking,” a BCA spokesman told me last week.

The BCA is commendably pressing on to investigate the deaths of Good and Pretti. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is also pursuing this. But it’s tough to pull it off without all the evidence gathered. Unfortunately, the feds’ freeze-out extends to this.

The lack of cooperation is unusual, as University of Minnesota law professor Amy Sweasy told me recently. The longer it goes on, the more it looks like federal officials don’t want the full story to see the light of day.

Federal officials are also refusing to share evidence in the shooting of another man: Julio Sosa-Celis. Sosa-Celis is a Venezuelan national living here who was shot by a federal agent on Jan. 14.

The BCA, Moriarty in Hennepin County and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office have had to resort to a drastic maneuver to access the evidence in all three shootings. They filed a lawsuit March 24 to compel the Trump administration to turn over this vital information.

The complaint is an infuriating read. Key evidence that the federal government is declining to share with Minnesota law enforcement includes:

The vehicle, according to the complaint, is shrink-wrapped and currently held in an FBI storage facility in Brooklyn Center, yet “has never been examined or processed.” BCA agents have obtained a search warrant for it and have repeatedly asked the FBI to provide them with the vehicle or allow the agency to execute the search warrant on it.

“FBI officials have either refused or not responded to these requests,” the complaint states.

The Minnesota parties filing the lawsuit also contend that the government broke its word repeatedly about sharing evidence with state investigators.

The complaint does not blame federal agents on the ground for the lack of cooperation. Instead it argues that these decisions come from the top leadership ranks.

The federal government’s documented fabrications in the Sosa-Celis shooting underscore why an independent investigation, one not led by the agencies employing the agents who shot these three Minnesotans, is imperative.

As the Star Tribune has reported, DHS officials initially claimed Sosa-Celis and another man had ambushed the agent who shot him, prompting the agent to fire in self-defense. Sosa-Celis was charged, but the charges were dropped after the federal government’s narrative collapsed in court, “refuted by video surveillance, crime scene photos and witness statements.”

There’s a deeply disturbing pattern emerging here, one that points to more than a just a coverup. Federal officials directing these efforts appear to believe that they and their agents are a privileged class to be shielded from the consequences of their actions, instead of being held to the same standards that everyone else would be.

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