The 37-year-old ICU nurse was killed serving to one other ICE sufferer. We should honor his sacrifice.
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 Pictures)
On Saturday morning in Minneapolis, federal brokers murdered 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at an area Veterans Authority hospital. Pretti was attempting to assist a lady whom federal brokers shoved violently to the bottom. A fellow ICE observer, the girl flew just a few toes by the air and landed exhausting; it needed to harm. “Are you OK?” Pretti requested her, in keeping with bystanders. These had been his final identified phrases. He stored attempting to assist the girl, and the brokers stored attempting to cease him, lastly capturing him within the head at shut vary, execution-style, after which a minimum of 9 extra instances. (You possibly can see movies, and a nonetheless photograph 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, had been, “I’m not mad at you, dude,” as she smiled at him. In response to his personal telephone video recording, Ross’s first phrases after he shot Good had been “Fucking bitch.”
A lot has been written concerning the misogyny behind the homicide of Good, in addition to the defamation of her spouse, Becca. The Division of Justice is investigating Becca Good, not Ross, for her alleged activist ties. Renee appeared to die for the crime of being a contented 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 informed Ross to take a lunch break.
Present Problem
Federal regulation enforcement officers are smearing Pretti, similar to they did Good, claiming he was “brandishing” a weapon. (He was legally carrying a holstered pistol.) Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem referred to as him a “home terrorist,” and Border Management commander at massive Greg Bovino, the mini-Nazi, stated he tried to “bloodbath regulation enforcement.” A number of 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 assistance from one other feminine ICE sufferer? We don’t. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps it’s associated. We all know the fascists don’t need white individuals standing up for immigrants and different individuals of colour, who’re the principle 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 assistance from the ladies they assault.
However it was not misplaced on Pretti’s devastated parents that he died “whereas attempting to guard the girl ICE simply pushed down all whereas being pepper-sprayed,” they stated in a press release. They wished us to know that reality. “Please get the reality out about our son,” they added. “He was an excellent man.”
Alex Pretti was an excellent man at a time when very dangerous males are operating our nation.
Proper-wingers from Nazi Stephen Miller to the previous Mission Veritas fraud James O’Keefe preserve insisting that Minneapolis ICE observers like Pretti and the Items are being paid. You understand why? As a result of the fitting 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 help we see in Minneapolis, and in different American cities, like Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and most not too long ago, Portland, Maine. Neighbors are coming to assistance from neighbors—a lot of them white individuals coming to assistance from Black and brown individuals, immigrants and residents alike, who’re being snatched off the streets, largely illegally, by masked invaders despatched by Trump. They do their laundry, they create 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 ladies.” Your complete right-wing undertaking to strip ladies of their rights, to thwart their progress within the office, to maintain them out of fight, is commonly defended as an effort to guard ladies, when after all it’s meant to revive ladies to their “rightful” place as breeders and tenders of youngsters 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 had 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 Fb.)
“At present we keep in mind that freedom isn’t free, that we’ve to work at it, nurture it and shield 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, individuals of colour, and democracy itself.
