This weekend, the streets of Minnesota ignited with even more protests in the wake of Alex Pretti’s death, the third shooting at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the St.Paul-Minneapolis area, according to Reuters.
As previously reported by theGrio, Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was fatally shot five times by ICE officers on Saturday, Jan 24. Following the incident, the Department of Homeland Security, which has orchestrated the deployment of ICE agents across the country, released a statement contradicting the video footage captured by witnesses in the area.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Pretti “approached U.S. border patrol officers with a 9 millimeter semi-automatic handgun,” however, videos taken from multiple angles revealed that Pretti was only holding his cell phone while trying to help fellow anti-ICE protesters. While reporting on the incident, CNN’s Sara Sidner outlined the root of the local and international outrage.
“I’m going to speak plainly and clearly,” she stated. “If all of the videos that we have seen are the only bits of evidence that are out there for investigators to look at, then DHS is lying. That is how everyone on the ground sees it, and anyone who has looked at those videos sees it.”
“They said that he was brandishing a weapon; that Alex Pretti was brandishing a weapon when he approached the border patrol agents. There is not a single video that shows that. The thing he was brandishing, if you will, was a cell phone,” she continued.
While members of the Trump administration like Noem, Vice President JD Vance and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have tried to frame Pretti as “an assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents,” witness videos shared across social media show Pretti being pepper sprayed, pushed to the ground, punched in the face multiple times with the same pepper spray canister by a group of ICE agents. As Sidner noted, one video shows agents calling out that Pretti had a gun in his waistband, which the late ICU nurse reportedly had a permit to carry and was never seen reaching for in any of the multiple videos. Despite a border patrol agent being seen removing the gun from Pretti’s waistband and walking away with it, another agent is shown drawing his weapon and releasing not one, but approximately 10 shots.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. He was a good man,” Pretti’s parents shared in a statement, per CNN. “He cared about people deeply, and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset.”
Pretti unfortunately joins a growing list of U.S. citizens fatally shot by ICE officers, including Renee Good and Keith Porter. Though the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge these incidents, other political leaders like Gov. Tim Walz and former President Barack Obama have issued statements surrounding Pretti’s death and the public outrage.
“The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault,” Obama wrote. “For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city. These unprecedented tactics – which even the former top lawyer of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration has characterized as embarrassing, lawless and cruel – have now resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S citizens. And yet rather than trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed, the President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanations for the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren’t informed by any serious investigation – and that appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence.”
“This has to stop,” he added. “In the meantime, every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country. They are a timely reminder that ultimately it’s up to each of us as citizens to speak out against injustice, protect our basic freedoms, and hold our government accountable.”
