Newly released video shows Alex Pretti got into a shocking physical confrontation with immigration enforcement 11 days before he was shot and killed in Minneapolis. While officials suggest this footage confirms a pattern of Pretti as a “terrorist,” it just evokes the troubling trope of the “perfect victim” that gets dragged out when people are looking for justification.
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In the footage — recorded on Jan. 13 and posted by The News Movement— Pretti is seen kicking out the taillight of a government SUV during a confrontation between ICE and a group of protesters. When the vehicle stops, agents hop out of the car and tackle him to the ground. Then, they turn to the crowd and begin pepper spraying them. Pretti was eventually let go.
President Donald Trump’s administration has been working overtime to vilify Pretti and Renee Good — another Minneapolis resident shot and killed by ICE — while justifying the use deadly force. Trump reacted to the footage on Truth Social, reposting clips declaring Pretti was a domestic terrorist, Newsweek reported.
“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street — despite posing no threat to anyone — he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,” an attorney for the Pretti family, Steve Schleicher, told CBS News. “Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on Jan 24.”
It’s a tactic Black folks have seen used to explain violence against Black Americans — ironically even in Minneapolis.
Blocks away from where Good was killed, the murder of George Floyd polarized the entire country. In the wake of his 2020 death, Floyd’s life and criminal history was quickly picked apart. Conservatives like Tucker Carlson defended Floyd’s killer, ex-officer Derek Chauvin, while painting Floyd as a drug addict and dangerous criminal.
His previous crimes were irrelevant to the manner in which he died, however. Still, he fell victim to the “perfect victim” complex — an unrealistic standard where victims are only worthy of empathy if they’re obviously weak, completely virtuous and attacked by a stranger. After Floyd’s trial, many blamed the “perfect victim” complex for making Floyd a martyr when he didn’t have a choice.
“The creation of the ‘perfect victim’ via the representation and hyper-visibility of anti-black public executions, the cannibalization, and martyrdom of george floyd & breonna taylor also showed the ineffectiveness & evils of ‘movement building’ off black names/faces/corpses,” @queersocialism tweeted.
Even the killing of Keith Porter Jr. on News Years Eve by an off-duty ICE agent didn’t receive as much news coverage as Pretti’s, and Black people online have noticed the double standard. “Keith Porter constantly being left out the conversation is why the concept of a ‘perfect victim’ is so detrimental,” @TanelleIrene said on X.
Fast forward to Pretti’s death, where once again the notion of a perfect victim is coming into play. “It had to be him,” TikToker @wilgloryy said of the 37-year-old’s death. “It quite literally had to be a white, heterosexual Christian male, who was baring arms,” she explained. In her eyes, Pretti is the “perfect victim,” unlike the narrative being spun about him by the Department of Homeland Security.
The president finally acknowledged that the ICE occupation in Minneapolis is getting out of control. Days after the third ICE-related shooting in the city, Trump rearranged federal leadership in the state and reached out to local leaders to find common ground.
According to reports, Pretti was shot and killed by two ICE agents, who have since been placed on administrative leave. Meanwhile, thousands are set to protest ICE occupation in a nationwide shutdown on Friday (Jan. 30).
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