They killed Alex Pretti, but they couldn’t
MINNEAPOLIS – When Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti early Saturday, people across the city instantly mobilized.
Eyewitnesses captured video footage of the gruesome murder and shared it on social media and privately in Signal chats that residents have been using to help protect each other from federal immigration agents who have been prowling the city since the Trump administration sent them here in December.
Dozens of residents arrived on the scene within an hour, and it wasn’t long before hundreds more arrived, facing off against heavily armed federal agents. The officers stood stoically with their weapons and their faces completely covered. Residents stood a few feet away, holding cardboard signs and cute knitted hats. They came screaming or crying, and some came because they simply thought the community needed their help.
“I just prepared myself,” said Miguel, who said he was prepared to stay as long as necessary. “I don’t know what I came to do, but I just needed to be present.”
Officially, federal immigration agents are in Minneapolis to arrest violent criminals who are in the country illegally. In reality, residents will tell you that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents are simply grabbing black and brown people off the streets and hauling them away.
It doesn’t matter if they don’t have a criminal record; Liam Ramos, 5, wasn’t a criminal, but he was caught outside his home last week and sent to a Texas detention center with his father.
In reality, residents say, federal agents routinely terrorize neighborhoods with immigrants. They are also killing citizens like Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked for Veterans Affairs, and Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother.
“Not again! Not fucking again!” a resident yelled at officers guarding the scene where Pretti was fatally shot.
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Miguel had been face to face with federal agents when he first arrived, separated by a flimsy stretch of yellow police tape that the agents established as a line not to cross. I was among the crowd of men and women, people of all different races and ages, as they loudly sang together: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” No one crossed the tape line, but the officers apparently had enough, so they fired tear gas at Miguel and others close to him.
“They just didn’t like the insults that were thrown at them, so they started throwing bottles of tears at us,” he said, his eyes watering and bloodshot. “I think what really set them off is that someone kicked a piece of ice in their direction and they didn’t like that, so they started shooting at us with pellet guns.”
Jacob, another resident, said he saw someone throw a snowball at an ICE agent. This caused the officers to cross their line again and charge into the crowd. “They started shooting tear gas,” he said, as grenades exploded behind him as he spoke.
Tony said he was only there 10 minutes before he was tear-gassed. Having walked from half a block away, he became exasperated as he described the officers crossing the tape line to “charge us all” and tackle some “other motherfucker” who had been cursing at the officers.
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“They dumped a fucking ton of gas,” Tony said, splashing water in his face and looking at the huge plume of smoke rising down the street. “They’re shooting at our neighbors, buddy!”
The confrontation lasted for hours, in sub-zero temperatures. But more and more residents arrived, wearing ski goggles and gas masks, and carrying homemade signs with anti-ICE messages. Most people stayed down the street, shouting messages like “Fuck ICE!” and “Damn Nazis!” Some approached federal agents to yell at them, only to run back as agents fired more tear gas and threw stun grenades at them. Others arrived with boxes of bottled water and handed them out to people so they could wash their irritated eyes or give them a drink after vomiting.
At one point, a tear gas canister that eyewitnesses said was thrown by a federal agent exploded near a parked car, shattering its windows and setting it on fire. There was so much smoke in the air and so many loud bangs that at times it seemed like a scene straight out of a war movie.
But the protesters were not instigating violence. Most people were filming the confrontation down the street, introducing themselves and discussing the sheer insanity of the situation. A woman was giving out free hugs to several willing recipients. At one point, a group of guys dragged trash cans and even a couch into the middle of the street, creating a sort of barricade as federal agents slowly tried to clear people from the area.
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It was a profound show of unity and determination by this community, and just one day after 50,000 residents marched downtown to demand that ICE leave their state. But people are still afraid of these federal agents. Most people didn’t want to give their full name or even their first name when we spoke. Some didn’t want to talk at all.
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I talked to a few people who lived on the block, but none of them felt comfortable talking for long. One of them had just arrived on this street on Friday and was shocked to see the scene unfolding in front of his apartment building, which was cordoned off with police tape. Another man down the street said he woke up to the sound of at least 10 gunshots at Pretti, and a woman who lived in the same apartment building as him said she moved here three months ago with her two children from the suburbs.
It is cheaper to live in this neighborhood than outside the city, said this black woman. But now she is worried about her children’s safety.
“This shit is too much,” he said. “I want to go back to the suburbs.”