Activism
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January 25, 2026
The 37-year-old ICU nurse was killed serving to one other ICE sufferer. We should honor his sacrifice.
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Flowers are left at a makeshift memorial within the space the place Alex Pretti was shot useless a day earlier by federal immigration brokers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 25, 2026.
(Octavio Jones / AFP through Getty Images)
On Saturday morning in Minneapolis, federal brokers murdered 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at a native Veterans Authority hospital. Pretti was making an attempt to assist a lady whom federal brokers shoved violently to the bottom. A fellow ICE observer, the girl flew a few toes via the air and landed arduous; it needed to damage. “Are you OK?” Pretti requested her, in keeping with bystanders. Those have been his final recognized phrases. He stored making an attempt to assist the girl, and the brokers stored making an attempt to cease him, lastly capturing him within the head at shut vary, execution-style, after which at least 9 extra instances. (You can see movies, and a nonetheless picture of his execution I want I hadn’t seen, throughout social media.) Pretti died on the scene.
The final Minnesotan murdered within the federal occupation of Minneapolis, simply greater than two weeks in the past, was Renee Good, a mom, a poet, and a lesbian, whose final phrases to her assassin, Jonathan Ross, have been, “I’m not mad at you, dude,” as she smiled at him. According to his personal cellphone video recording, Ross’s first phrases after he shot Good have been “Fucking bitch.”
Much has been written in regards to the misogyny behind the homicide of Good, in addition to the defamation of her spouse, Becca. The Department of Justice is investigating Becca Good, not Ross, for her alleged activist ties. Renee appeared to die for the crime of being a blissful lesbian with a spunky spouse who was confronting ICE, respectfully, and with humor. In Becca’s final phrases earlier than her spouse’s homicide, she advised Ross to take a lunch break.
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Federal legislation enforcement officers are smearing Pretti, identical to they did Good, claiming he was “brandishing” a weapon. (He was legally carrying a holstered pistol.) Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem known as him a “domestic terrorist,” and Border Control commander at giant Greg Bovino, the mini-Nazi, stated he meant to “massacre law enforcement.” Multiple movies from a number of angles confirmed their claims to be slanderous lies.
How will we make sense of Pretti being murdered for coming to the help of one other feminine ICE sufferer? We don’t. Maybe it’s a coincidence, possibly it’s associated. We know the fascists don’t need white folks standing up for immigrants and different folks of coloration, who’re the primary victims of Operation Metro Surge (and all the opposite perversely named federal invasions, together with Maine’s revolting “Catch of the Day,” as if immigrants are fish to be caught and killed.) And apparently, they don’t need males coming to the help of the ladies they assault.
But it was not misplaced on Pretti’s devastated dad and mom that he died “while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper-sprayed,” they stated in a assertion. They wished us to know that truth. “Please get the truth out about our son,” they added. “He was a good man.”
Alex Pretti was a good man at a time when very unhealthy males are operating our nation.
Right-wingers from Nazi Stephen Miller to the previous Project Veritas fraud James O’Keefe maintain insisting that Minneapolis ICE observers like Pretti and the Goods are being paid. You know why? Because the proper wing has an infrastructure of billions of {dollars} out there to fund mendacity scum like “videographer” O’Keefe to malign liberals and the left. They can not conceive of the real, spontaneous mutual help and assist we see in Minneapolis, and in different American cities, like Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and most lately, Portland, Maine. Neighbors are coming to the help of neighbors—many of them white folks coming to the help of Black and brown folks, immigrants and residents alike, who’re being snatched off the streets, principally illegally, by masked invaders despatched by Trump. They do their laundry, they convey them meals, they stroll their kids to and from college to allow them to keep at dwelling and attempt to keep secure (though that technique is failing as ICE brokers more and more hunt their prey door to door).
Trump, an adjudicated rapist, has declared, “I cherish women.” The whole right-wing mission to strip ladies of their rights, to thwart their progress within the office, to maintain them out of fight, is usually defended as an effort to guard ladies, when of course it’s meant to revive ladies to their “rightful” place as breeders and tenders of kids and helpmates to males.
Pretti is being remembered on social media as a devoted VA nurse who at all times spoke up if he thought his feminine colleagues on the wards have been being disrespected. He was chosen to honor a veteran he tended after the person died. (The veteran’s grateful son posted the tribute to Facebook.)
“Today we remember that freedom is not free, that we have to work at it, nurture it and protect it, and even sacrifice for it,” he learn to a small memorial within the hospital ward. Pretti did that work, and he sacrificed for our freedom. Let’s honor his sacrifice by stepping up our efforts to cease this lawless assault on immigrants, folks of coloration, and democracy itself.
Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the creator of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way within the Next America. Her new guide (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.
