The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good have intensified protests, community patrols, and national scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Minneapolis protests clampdown, killings by federal agents. But instead of feeling defeated, its residents did not back down. Increasingly vocal, more determined, they took to the streets to denounce the atrocities committed by ICE. The death of Alex Pretti not only shocked Minneapolis but the entire world, just days before a Senate vote that could trigger a crippling shutdown of the Trump government.
Trump couldn’t take it anymore, annoyed with ICE Barbie, Kristi Noem, and her ‘aggressor’ leader, Greg Bovino, who strutted around and boasted with his Nazi antics — they have been removed from Minneapolis in an attempt to calm the situation and not put his government at risk. But it isn’t over, the lessons that the people of Minneapolis leave for the country are lasting and will help people say ‘enough’ to ICE’s excesses.
The people, instead of withdrawing from the streets following the shooting deaths of two people at the hands of federal officers, residents of Minneapolis, in the US state of Minnesota, are resolutely building watch patrols, marching in the cold and standing up for one another. In the process, the city is redefining itself — and what ‘Minnesota nice’ really means.”
Even before federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, tensions over the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement activities in the Twin Cities were already high.
But Pretti’s death, at a time where Minneapolitans were still reeling over the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents earlier this month, has led to further outrage.
“What happened yesterday to Alex Pretti is sickening. I feel an immense amount of grief for him, his family, and my city. It’s also an even bigger eye-opener for what we’re really dealing with,” resident Victoria Jocko said.
“Those ICE agents violently assaulted him and then executed him in broad daylight,” Jocko said.
And fears of more violence are mounting.
“The worry I have is: How many more of us are going to die before this thing’s over with? How many more American citizens?” asked Vin Dionne, a Native American rights advocate, who has been active in ICE-watch patrols.
Immigration clampdown met with protests
Since the Trump administration deployed thousands of agents in what it called intensified immigration enforcement push in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, communities have responded by installing volunteer watchers to warn their neighbors of ICE’s presence, and organizing grocery deliveries for migrant families too fearful of being swept up by ICE to leave their houses, as well as with large-scale anti-ICE protests.
A demonstration on Friday saw about 50,000 people marching amid temperatures of around -25 degree Celsius (-13 F) against ICE’s presence in Minneapolis, ending up inside and around the Target Center, a sports and entertainment venue in the city center.
Dionne, who performed a Native American chant at the Target Center, told the thousands of people gathered in peaceful protest lay in stark contrast to Pretti’s violent death at the hands of federal agents the next morning.
“That was a beautiful, amazing moment having that many people as peaceful as we’ve been staying. We don’t want the army coming here to blow us away, right?” Dionne said. “And it brought so much strength and unity. It felt really good. And then the very next day, ICE murders one of our people, an everyday citizen.”
Residents declare end of ‘Minnesota nice’
Public anger has continued to rise, with anti-ICE protests erupting over the weekend in Minneapolis after Pretti’s death, with demonstrators chanting “No more Minnesota nice” and “ICE out now.”
“Minnesota nice” is a descriptive shorthand for a culture of warmth and friendliness—translating to the kind of place where thoughtful residents will offer hand warmers and tea amid frigid temperatures or offer their parked cars as spaces for pedestrians to warm up.
But people here also say the federal surge has made it into the kind of place where permanent watchfulness has become a fact of life, where people size each other up on the street to protect themselves.
“When I’m driving around, I’m more vigilant. I’m trying to avoid narrow streets where my car could be boxed in,” activist Taylor Jones said.
“I was driving on the freeway the other night to a friend’s house, and a giant SUV with heavily tinted windows was behind me for a while, and I missed my exit because oh my gosh, I might be followed,” Jones said. “Lots of people are taking just little precautions like that. And that’s how you eat away at freedom, right? That’s how you eat away at liberty.”
