They Killed Alex Pretti. We Can’t Pretend We Didn’t See It.

I’ve watched the videos. We all have. What happened to Alex Pretti in Minneapolis wasn’t policing. It was a killing carried out by the state, in public, and recorded from a dozen angles by citizens who understood exactly what they were witnessing.

We need to be clear about what ICE and CBP were doing in Minneapolis. Three thousand armed federal agents were deployed to the city for what officials described as the largest immigration enforcement operation in history. But this was not confined to immigration arrests. Those agents confronted protesters, deployed tear gas and pepper balls against American citizens, and conducted armed crowd control on city streets far from any border or port of entry.

Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse with his phone in hand, documenting what was happening. When federal agents shoved a woman to the ground, he moved to help her. His last words were “Are you okay?” According to an analysis by The Washington Post, agents then pepper-sprayed him and wrestled him to the ground. One agent removed Pretti’s gun from his waistband. DHS policy states that once a subject is restrained, only minimal force is permitted. Instead, at least ten shots were fired.

Multiple videos support this account. A woman in the pink jacket filmed it. Someone across the street captured it. A woman in her car got a straight-on view. On the recordings, you can hear citizens asking in real-time, “What did you just do? What did you just do?”

The constitutional violations are numerous. Alex Pretti was filming police activity, which is explicitly legal. He had a legal carry permit and the weapon was in his waistband. At no point does any video show him drawing it. His First and Second Amendment rights were used to justify his execution.

Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine who served four tours in Iraq, put it directly in a video statement. “If a Marine, an 18-year-old Marine, did that in Iraq in the middle of a war zone, he would be court-martialed, because it is murder.” 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s response has been grotesque. Hours after Alex Pretti was killed in the Minneapolis streets, there was no pause or concern that federal agents acting in the administration’s name killed an American citizen. Instead, President Trump retreated into a curated reality with a private screening of Melania’s vanity documentary at the White House.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s priorities were equally revealing in the aftermath of the killing. She sent Governor Tim Walz a three-page letter demanding immediate access to state voter rolls rather than providing investigative cooperation on the federal operation that just killed an American citizen. Bondi stated the information was needed to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law. This is the same justification the DOJ has used while demanding full unredacted voter rolls from all 50 states and suing states that refuse.

The timing was precise. So was the message. While the city was reeling, the federal government was focused on political data. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon called it an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. citizens. Simon further described the demand as an apparent ransom for the state’s peace and security.

What Comes Next

After Renee Good was killed, David Epps, the former Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King, wrote on this website that we should wait for investigations to complete before forming judgments. He acknowledged his own biases as a law enforcement chaplain and the father of a police officer, and he argued that perspective influences how we view these incidents.

I respect that position, and I understand the impulse. But the federal government has effectively preempted any real inquiry into Renee Good. The Justice Department directed FBI agents to shut down a civil rights investigation and instead investigate Good herself for assaulting the officer who shot her. A federal magistrate judge rejected the warrant, noting that Good was already dead and could not be considered a suspect. State investigators were blocked from the scene, and six federal prosecutors resigned in protest.

With Alex Pretti, the administration’s response was immediate condemnation rather than investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled him a “domestic terrorist,” while Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino claimed Pretti intended to “do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” without providing evidence to support these claims.

Given all this, we’re past the point where “wait and see” is reasonable.

That argument also assumes the investigations themselves would be trustworthy. Within hours of Alex Pretti’s death, a judge had to issue a restraining order preventing ICE from destroying evidence. That’s the justice system itself saying these agencies can’t be trusted to preserve a crime scene. When the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was blocked from accessing the shooting scene despite having a search warrant, the system designed to deliver accountability showed it can’t be trusted to preserve evidence. 

So what do we do about all this?

Protests matter because they force the world to look at what happened. The press also performs a vital service when it engages in actual journalism and refuses to provide a false balance to a murder. But moral outrage alone will not be enough.

This administration responds to power rather than principle. They respond to legal consequences and political pressure that threaten their grip. We take that power away by refusing to provide political cover. We take it away by making clear that deploying federal agents to kill American citizens exercising their constitutional rights is grounds for impeachment.

Congress must also act on other fronts. First, ICE needs complete reorganization. Federal agents have no business conducting armed protest control against American citizens. Immigration enforcement does not require crowd control tactics. What happened in Minneapolis is the inevitable result of this mission creep.

Second, the legal framework shielding these agents must change. Congress must eliminate qualified immunity for federal officers and restore the ability to sue the government when constitutional rights are violated. A system that prevents accountability after a man is killed in custody is not a just system.

Beyond political and legal mechanisms, we need something even more basic from our fellow citizens. Anyone with decency and respect for our societal norms should refuse to condone or excuse what happened in Minneapolis. This is not a partisan issue but a fundamental question about whether we accept state violence.

Know What You’re Actually Defending

Now, some of you are already forming your defenses. Maybe you’ll think the full story will come out and contradict the released videos. Maybe you’ll blame Alex Pretti himself for being there. Maybe you’ll blame the incident on a far-left socialist network like Fox News is claiming. And some of you may skip the defense entirely and go straight to attacking me for writing all this.

But before you justify what happened, consider what those defenses require you to accept. That filming police is somehow threatening. That helping a woman who has been knocked to the ground is somehow dangerous. That carrying a lawfully owned firearm in a waistband is somehow provocative. That ICE may shoot a restrained man ten times.

If you can watch those videos and find justification, then this is not a disagreement about facts. It is a disagreement about whether the government may kill citizens in public and expect obedience in return.

And if your answer changes based on the political views of the victim, then you don’t actually believe in constitutional rights. You believe in conditional privileges that the government can revoke when it wants.

The citizens of Minnesota have shown remarkable restraint. They’ve responded with documentation, not violence. They’ve filed legal motions, not thrown punches. They’ve taken the high road when the administration desperately wants them to take the bait. 

That restraint is commendable as this operation expands to other cities.On January 21, a photo purportedly showing ICE vehicles in transit to Atlanta circulated online: