Alex Pretti was killed on a Minneapolis street for recording federal agents. Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was filming ICE agents in South Minneapolis when officers confronted him and sprayed him with pepper spray at close range. Video footage shows Pretti stumbling and appearing disoriented. Multiple agents then rush toward him, grabbing and striking him as he falls to the ground. In one widely shared angle, an agent is seen removing a firearm from Pretti and walking away with it. Moments later, a single gunshot is heard. Agents scatter. Then nine more shots are fired into Pretti’s body, many after he is already motionless.The videos are difficult to watch. They are also essential.
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“Thank God we have video,” Tim Walz said during a press conference later that day. “Because according to DHS, these seven heroic guys took an onslaught of a battalion against them. It’s nonsense. It’s lies.”
Reporting from the scene shows federal agents moved quickly to control the area. ICE initially attempted to limit access by local law enforcement as city officials sought to secure the scene. Witnesses reported being detained and removed from the area. Federal authorities then released a photo of a firearm they claimed was used by Pretti, the first step in a familiar narrative construction.
Minnesota is a concealed carry state. According to Brian O’Hara, Pretti had a valid permit to carry. Nevertheless, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement claiming Pretti “approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.” The statement continued: “Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.”
This language follows a pattern. In official statements, ICE agents are perpetually “fearing for their lives,” even when video evidence contradicts that claim. In this case, multiple camera angles show a man holding a phone, not a weapon, who is dead within forty-five seconds of being confronted for filming. Frame-by-frame breakdowns are already circulating. The footage does not support the official account.It also matters to name this plainly: both Renée Good and Alex Pretti were white American citizens. Many Black Americans are tragically familiar with watching people who look like us die at the hands of law enforcement, only to see the violence justified by half the country. Watching this happen to white citizens has unsettled many who believed their whiteness or citizenship status exempted them from the power of the state.
What is happening in Minnesota is not isolated. It is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of a militarized federal presence operating with minimal oversight and maximal narrative control.This is what an occupation looks like. It creates chaos. It costs lives. And it depends on lies told quickly enough to outrun the truth. Minnesotans did not ask for this. And the 10,000 people who stood in subzero temperatures to protest made one thing clear: we will not accept it.
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