Five days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo issued a 285-word statement.

The former Clark County sheriff said he and his wife Donna were “distressed” by the events and emphasized the importance of peacefully exercising First Amendment rights without fear of retribution. 

The Republican governor said he would withhold judgment until a formal report and explicitly stated his support for President Donald Trump’s call for a “thorough and unbiased review of all the evidence in these cases.” The statement reiterated Lombardo’s support of the president’s “efforts to secure the border” and remove violent or repeat criminals.

“As a career law enforcement officer, I know better than to draw conclusions related to law enforcement action without having all the facts at my disposal and I encourage all Americans to attempt to do the same,” Lombardo wrote. 

While increased deportations and immigration arrests under Trump have affected every state, Nevada and its immigrant-heavy population has so far avoided the droves of masked and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seen in Minneapolis and other Democrat-led cities and jurisdictions. 

Most immigration arrests in Nevada are taking place through the prison system and local jails rather than in the broader community. Data from the Prison Policy Initiative shows the majority of ICE arrests in Nevada (nearly 73 percent) took place in jails and other lock-ups, compared with only 32 percent in Minnesota.

“I think perhaps it may seem random to the public, but I do think that they are focusing on places they view where they would make more symbolic statements by enforcement,” Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute think tank, told The Indy in an interview.

In interviews, people connected to Nevada’s political world noted that there’s not a single direct answer for the lack of escalation but it could be related to a confluence of factors: Nevada’s Republican governor, its status as a critical swing state that broke for Trump in the 2024 election, existing political connections to the Trump administration and the state’s lack of implementation of sanctuary policies or direct prohibitions on working with federal immigration officials. 

Ruiz Soto said that the Trump administration’s strategy is “less about policy and more about optics” with the most heavy-handed enforcement happening in the most “oppositional places.” 

“I don’t think it's a unique experience to Nevada that there hasn't been significant, big raids,” he said.  

Though Ruiz Soto said that Lombardo’s willingness to collaborate with the Trump administration serves as a “buffer,” it may not be enough to avoid more intense ICE activity in the future. 

“The other piece here I think it's important to know about, why not Nevada … is because there are still limited resources that ICE has,” Ruiz Soto said.

Michael Kagan, director of the immigration clinic at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, said it’s dangerous to think that any particular state or jurisdiction is going to be immune from an ICE crackdown, or a political set of circumstances will influence long-term decision-making.

“ICE has ramped up operations in Las Vegas, they are arresting more people, and there are a lot of people in a growing detained population,” Kagan said. “All of those things are continuing more quietly than the very visible operations with people in armed military fatigues, like what you see in Minneapolis.” 

Lombardo impact

Some of those who spoke to The Nevada Independent viewed Lombardo’s statement as an attempt to walk a narrow tightrope, and checked the boxes of responding to an issue of vast public interest while avoiding drawing negative attention to the Silver State.

“Our governor is up for re-election soon. He’s done a good job of being independent in a lot of his policies, but at the same time aligning himself enough to not anger the administration, and I think he’s done a good job of doing that,” said lobbyist and former Assm. Tom Roberts (R-Las Vegas), who overlapped with Lombardo at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (Metro). “And at the same time, he’s done a good job of keeping some of the negative administration policies out of the state.”

From Republican political consultant Jeremy Hughes’ perspective, the governor was not navigating any lines with his statement addressing Pretti’s killing.

“He’s doing what he always does,” Hughes, who consults on Lombardo’s campaign, said. “I think he’s just showing his humanity in all of this.”

Lombardo has weighed in on high-profile killings by law enforcement in the past. Following the murder of George Floyd, Lombardo told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in March 2021, before he announced his run for governor, that Floyd’s death “effected change” within his agency.

“Nobody is trained to do that,” Lombardo told the paper about the force used against Floyd. “I don’t care what police department you are, whether you are a robust police department like us, or a small local community police department. Nobody is trained to conduct themselves that way.”

Hughes said one key difference between Nevada and Minnesota is the level to which law enforcement will work with federal agents and honor ICE detainers. Not only have efforts to end agreements with ICE failed in the Legislature, but state and local officials have actively dismissed any connection to sanctuary status.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is part of a formal 287(g) agreement, meaning it has a policy of informing ICE about immigrants set for release from jails, and Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley has publicly stated that the city communicates with federal immigration officials.

“Having that level of cooperation and help, I think, makes a lot of difference,” Hughes said, noting that Minnesota is an outlier when it comes to the lack of communication between police and ICE. (Minnesota, like Nevada, ended up on a Trump administration list of sanctuary jurisdictions last year, but leaders including Gov. Tim Walz have rejected the label.)

Lombardo and Attorney General Aaron Ford — his top Democratic challenger in the gubernatorial race — have gone back and forth on immigration issues, with Lombardo repeatedly blaming Ford for Nevada’s designation as a sanctuary state last year. Ford has rebutted the claim, calling it “a blatant attempt by a desperate governor to earn praise from Donald Trump in an election year.” On Monday, he criticized Lombardo’s silence in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s death as “shameful.”

Immigration arrests are still substantially up in Nevada. In the first six months of 2025, immigration arrests increased by nearly 300 percent compared with the same period in 2024. 

“People say, ‘ICE hasn’t come here.’ That’s completely wrong,” Kagan said.

Nevada’s political climate

In recent months, Lombardo has worked with federal officials on immigration policy and tried to distance Nevada from labels such as “sanctuary state,” which the Trump administration placed on the state in August. 

Lombardo began negotiating behind the scenes, and in September signed an agreement with the Department of Justice to comply with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda; Nevada was the only one on the August list that doesn’t appear on a “sanctuary” list published in October. Over the summer, Lombardo authorized the state’s National Guard to assist ICE in an “administrative capacity.” 

The authorization was supposed to last until Nov. 15, but the deployment was extended until September 2026 this fall, according to a statement from the National Guard to The Nevada Independent on Wednesday. No official announcement of the extension was made, and guard members have been told not to interact with ICE detainees or do public-facing work.

There are also the political connections. Lombardo — a Republican endorsed twice by Trump — is no Tim Walz, the high-profile Democratic Minnesota governor who was Kamala Harris’ vice presidential pick in the 2024 election cycle. 

Roberts and others also noted that Trump also has received generous campaign finance support from casino executives and other Nevada business interests. One of those supporters includes Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-American GOP donor and majority owner of Las Vegas Sands, who has contributed more than $152 million to Trump’s campaign over the years and been praised publicly by the president.

“I think he has friends here, and I believe that they understand the impact that something like that could have on gaming and tourism,” Roberts said.

Lack of state laws

Compared with states with more targeted enforcement, Nevada also has fewer laws protecting undocumented immigrants, despite past efforts. In 2017, state Democrats introduced a bill to bar police departments from using resources for immigration enforcement, which died after Ford (then the top state Senate Democrat) canceled a planned hearing.  

In 2021, a similar effort was gutted. Lombardo also vetoed a bill to limit ICE in schools in the 2025 session. 

As other states have moved to block agreements between local law enforcement and immigration officials (commonly referred to as 287(g) agreements), Nevada has taken no such steps, and Metro rejoined the agreement during Trump’s second term.

“Things like the elimination of 287(g) and preventing local law enforcement agencies from working with ICE, you know, the reality is states like Minnesota had a lot more of that,” Assm. Selena Torres-Fossett (D-Las Vegas) told The Nevada Independent in an interview.

In the 2025 special session, Democrats did manage to include language in a bill signed by Lombardo limiting law enforcement on school grounds, but legislators on both sides of the aisle told The Nevada Independent that they were confident that it would avoid federal scrutiny as it would affect more than just undocumented students. Unlike the earlier bill, the law passed in the special session didn’t single out immigration agents. 

Many progressives contended that the Legislature should have done more to boost protections for undocumented people, such as preventing police partnerships with ICE, and activists helped kill a proposed study on what federal immigration enforcement agents are doing in the state on the grounds it was insufficient. 

“Obviously, it would still impact Nevada if they were to come in and do those things, but I think it would just give us added sense of protection that we just don’t have here,” Torres-Fossett said about stronger immigrant protection laws.

Reporter Oona Milliken contributed to this story.