US immigration agents may have breached "protocol" in Minneapolis before the fatal shooting of a nurse during protests, President Donald Trump's senior aide Stephen Miller has said.
His comments come just days after he called 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti an assassin.
Mr Trump has said he wants to de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis following the killing Mr Pretti during a protest against an immigration crackdown on Saturday.
Deputy Chief of Staff Miller, who leads Mr Trump's hardline immigration policy, said in a statement that the White House was now looking into the possible breach.
Trump says 'going to deescalate a little bit' in Minnesota
He said the White House had provided "clear guidance" that extra personnel were sent to Minnesota to protect deportation agents and "create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors."
"We are evaluating why the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) team may not have been following that protocol," Mr Miller said.
The White House later said that Mr Miller was referring to "general guidance" to immigration agents operating in the state, rather than the specific incident in which Mr Pretti was killed.
It added that officials would be "examining why additional force protection assets may not have been present to support the operation" to remove undocumented migrants from Minnesota.
Mr Miller also appeared to blame both the border agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for his comments on Saturday, which have since attracted criticism.
Shortly after the killing, Mr Miller called Pretti a "would-be assassin" and accused him of wanting to murder federal agents.
But Mr Miller said his comments were based on an initial statement by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who falsely said Mr Pretti was brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents.
Video evidence later showed that Mr Pretti was not holding a gun at the time. He had a sidearm on him, but agents had already removed it before he was shot multiple times at point-blank range.
"The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground," Mr Miller said in his statement.
Meanwhile, the president's so-called border czar, Tom Homan, has met the Minneapolis mayor and the Minnesota governor, as the White House sought to ease unrest in the city.
Some advisers have expressed concern that national outrage over the deaths of Mr Pretti and that of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on 7 January, could derail Mr Trump's broader immigration agenda.
Mr Homan's job in Minneapolis is to "recalibrate tactics" and improve cooperation with state and local officials, a source with ties to the White House said, adding: "The goal is to scale back, eventually pull out".
Speaking about the situation on Fox News yesterday, Mr Trump said his administration was "going to de-escalate a little bit".
"I don't think it's a pullback. It's a little bit of change," the president said.
Asked whether he retained confidence Ms Noem, whose role in the crisis brought calls for her dismissal or impeachment from leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, President Trump said: "I do."
The president met with Ms Noem, at her request, for two hours in the Oval Office on Monday evening, a source briefed on the matter confirmed.
Recalibrating the surge
A senior Trump administration official said Mr Homan would move away from the broad, public neighbourhood sweeps that Gregory Bovino has conducted in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and other cities and adopt a more traditional, targeted approach.
In a statement, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he had reiterated to Mr Homan his request that the enforcement action, known as Operation Metro Surge, "come to an end as quickly as possible," and that city leaders would remain in touch with him.
The 30-minute meeting included the city's police chief.
In a separate meeting with Mr Homan, Governor Tim Walz said he had outlined the state's priorities, including impartial investigations into the two shootings and a reduction in the 3,000-strong force of federal agents deployed to the city.
Mr Homan and Mr Walz agreed to continue working toward those goals, the governor said.
Mr Homan called the meetings a "productive starting point" for additional "conversations with key stakeholders in the days ahead".
Tension in Minneapolis stayed high, despite the initial efforts to lower friction.
At a town hall meeting yesterday, a man sprayed an unknown liquid at Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar as she called for ICE to be abolished and for Ms Noem to resign.
Ecuador's foreign ministry said an ICE agent tried to enter its Minneapolis consulate yesterday.
Announcing his plan to send in Mr Homan, the subject of a US Justice Department bribery probe that was abruptly closed last year, Mr Trump sought to cast his designated "border czar" as a neutral figure in the Minnesota crisis who "knows and likes many of the people there".
In weekend talks between the president and his advisers, discussions included reducing the number of agents in Minnesota, focusing the mission more narrowly on deportations, and exploring greater coordination with state authorities, according to a White House official.
Support for Trump's immigration drive wanes
The killing of Mr Pretti, a veterans hospital intensive care nurse shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents during daytime protests, has turned into a full-blown political crisis for Mr Trump, with even some Republicans in Congress calling for investigations.
Coupled with the 7 January shooting of Ms Good, a mother of three, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Mr Pretti's death sparked renewed anger over the heavily armed federal agents on the Minneapolis streets.
Minnesota's chief federal judge threatened to hold the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, in contempt for his agency's failures to comply with court orders that some detainees receive bond hearings.
Public support for Mr Trump's immigration enforcement tactics appeared to be waning both before and after Mr Pretti'’s shooting, a Reuters/Ipsos poll suggested.
The issue has put Republicans on the defensive ahead of November's midterm elections, when the party's narrow congressional majorities are at stake.
President Trump characterised private conversations with both Mr Walz and Mr Frey as productive, while the two Democratic leaders offered similarly positive comments, a far cry from the vitriol the sides had previously exchanged.
Mr Walz and Mr Frey were among several Democratic state and local officials subpoenaed one week ago in a Justice Department probe into whether their opposition to Operation Metro Surge amounted to a crime.
At the White House, Mr Trump expressed sympathy for Mr Pretti's family and said he would be "watching over" the investigation into his killing.
Mr Pretti "certainly shouldn't have been carrying a gun," Mr Trump told reporters in Iowa, comments that put him at odds with gun rights groups and some Republicans.
While Mr Trump stood by Ms Noem, the three top Democrats in the US House of Representatives and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said they would seek to initiate impeachment proceedings against her unless she was fired.
Any impeachment would require some level of support from Republicans, who control the House, to move forward.
