On January 24, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) murdered 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in an execution-style shooting. The murder comes just weeks after federal agents murdered anti-ICE activist and legal observer Renee Good and shot Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis non-fatally, all in Minneapolis.
In several bystander videos, Pretti and a woman can be seen filming CBP agents with their phones before an agent aggressively approaches them, getting in Pretti’s face. Backup agents arrive and then begin macing the protesters directly in the face and shoving them around.
Somewhat incapacitated, Pretti courageously puts his body on the line and shields the woman from the attack. Agents turn their focus to him, assaulting him from all angles as he is on the ground. One agent notices a handgun in Pretti’s holster and removes it. Shortly after, an agent draws his weapon and fires a shot at Pretti, and the other officers respond with more fire. Ten shots can be heard in videos as the agents execute Pretti.
State officials immediately justified the murder, with Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino baselessly asserting at a press conference that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” In an open rejection of constitutional rights, FBI Director Kash Patel said, “you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.” Patel has previously backed the ultra-reactionary vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, who traveled armed to Wisconsin in August 2020 amid mass uprisings against police terror and shot and killed two protesters and wounded a third.
The murder of Pretti comes just one day after tens of thousands of Minnesotans marched in the streets in -20 degree weather on January 23, in what protesters and organizations described as a “general strike.” It was the largest demonstration in Minneapolis to this point since the start of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge” targeting foreign-born workers in Minnesota.
As news of Pretti’s murder spread, protesters in the city began to erect dumpster barricades to impede the movement of law enforcement.
Federal agents repeatedly fired chemical weapons at protesters and drove armored vehicles through crowds as local police enforced a perimeter and corralled the protesters.
Protesters responded by lighting dumpsters on fire and throwing tear gas canisters back. The police would advance, and the protesters would temporarily retreat; once the gas had subsided, the protesters returned, going back and forth late into the night.
At a vigil for Pretti, protesters chanted “Burn down Fort Snelling,” which is the location of ICE’s Minneapolis facility.
Anti-ICE protests quickly spread to New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Phoenix, Washington D.C., Boston, Milwaukee, Providence, San Antonio, with many more scheduled in the coming days.
In a statement, Pretti’s parents wrote that “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.”
Image: Screenshot of CBP agents brutalizing Alex Pretti shortly before opening fire.
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