A Staggering Number of Minnesotans Took to the Streets Friday to Demand ICE Leave. The Next Day, ICE Responded by Killing Another Resident.
Saturday morning marked the third shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis this month. “How many more Americans need to die for this operation to end?” said Mayor Jacob Frey.
Thomas Birmingham and Ari Bloomekatz
About 50,000 protesters took to the streets in downtown Minneapolis on Friday to demand ICE and its thousands of federal agents immediately leave the state and stop brutalizing and killing residents and, as recently as Tuesday, snatching preschoolers.
The next morning, ICE agents responded to Friday’s economic shutdown, acts of civil disobedience, and uprising in the seemingly only way they know how: by beating, shooting and killing.
In this case, it was 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was shot and killed Saturday morning.
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummelling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters on Saturday during a press conference.
Frey was referring to a video widely circulating on social media that shows the moment federal agents shot and killed Pretti, who was also identified by authorities as a U.S. citizen .
“How many more Americans need to die,” Frey asked, “for this operation to end?”
The Department of Homeland Security claims Pretti was armed, and Minneapolis Police Chief Bryan O’Hara said at the same press conference with Frey that Pretti had a legal permit to carry a firearm. O’Hara also told CNN that ICE agents attempted to prevent local police from accessing the scene of the killing.
Footage posted on social media shows Pretti filming a group of federal agents with a cell phone before one agent begins shoving him backwards.
As protests in response to Pretti’s killing continue throughout Minneapolis on Saturday, cell phone footage from the incident began circulating and includes a bystander crying out “Not again!”
They were referring to previous violence and killing of Minneapolis residents, including the January 7 shooting of poet, Minneapolis resident, and mother of three Renee Good. Good was shot at least three times — including in the head— by federal agents.
While additional details are expected to emerge throughout Saturday and through the weekend, Frey closed his remarks at the press conference Saturday with a question directed at the thousands of masked agents continuing to occupy the city:
“Are you standing up for American families right now?” Frey asked. “Or are we tearing them apart?”
Saturday’s killing came roughly 24 hours after some 100 faith leaders blocked a key road at the Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport in an act of civil disobedience against ICE. Among them was Pastor John Rohde Schwehn, campus pastor at Minneapolis’ Augsburg University.
“Our children are not okay in Minnesota. They’re afraid. They’re being tear-gassed, they’re being harassed, they’re being lied about, they’re being put into planes and sent to prisons,” Rohde Schwehn said at the action.
“We pray that ICE will return home and take off their masks,” Rohde Schwehn said.
“They do not have to be here terrorizing our children.”
Thomas Birmingham is the Research Fellow at In These Times and an investigative reporter in New Haven, Connecticut. He has previously covered housing, tenant movements, and criminal justice for The Nation, The Appeal and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Ari Bloomekatz is Executive Editor at In These Times. He was previously the Managing Editor of Rethinking Schools and Tikkun magazines, and spent several years as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Follow him @bloomekatz.
