His last words, spoken to a woman who had been tackled to the ground and pepper-sprayed by nearby ICE agents, were “Are you OK?” Alex Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital; those who knew him recalled, among other things, his devotion to his elderly dog, Joule, who died about a year ago.

In bystander videos taken of Pretti’s death, he can be seen holding up his phone to video ICE agents operating in Minneapolis, and waving cars around him to avoid the officers as they attack other onlookers. After he is dragged away from the woman he was trying to help, a gaggle of ICE officers surround Pretti and force him to the ground, beating and restraining him there as he struggles to free himself.

At least 10 shots appear to be fired within the span of five seconds. Pretti is splayed motionless on the asphalt. “What the fuck, they killed him,” a bystander’s voice can be heard screaming in one of several videos of the incident. “Did they fucking kill that guy?” Like his fellow Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was also killed by ICE this month, Alex Pretti was 37.

Trump administration and border patrol officials immediately sought to cast Pretti, like Good, as a villain. After the US senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar posted on X about Pretti’s killing, saying: “Donald Trump and all your lieutenants who ordered this ICE surge: watch the horrific video of the killing today,” Stephen Miller, the senior White House official, replied saying: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response?” Miller provided zero evidence for the terrorism label or for the assassination attempt claims.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, also described Pretti, a nurse, as a “domestic terrorist” without providing evidence. Meanwhile the border patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who wears an olive-green greatcoat that German media outlets liken to a “Nazi uniform”, said it “looks like” Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement”. He also did not present any evidence for his claims.

The administration also claimed that Pretti, who was licensed to carry a legal firearm, was attacking the ICE officers. This claim is contradicted by the video evidence, which shows Pretti filming ICE – a constitutionally protected activity – and seeking to assist fellow observers who were being hurt by the agents, with one hand holding his phone and another shielding his face from pepper spray.

Ella Baron on the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis – cartoon
Ella Baron on the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis – cartoon
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We can believe what both video evidence and ICE’s own past behavior suggest: that Pretti was observing the actions of federal agents who are engaged in a military occupation of his home city; that he was looking to make the agents’ work of ethnically cleansing his neighbors more onerous, but that he was not looking to engage in violence; that he was peacefully exercising his right to observe Trump’s agents and to voice his disagreement with what they were doing. And that he was killed for it. The videos of Pretti’s shooting are disturbing. When dissidents face summary executions by armed, masked thugs in a totalitarian regime, they are usually read accusations in a mock trial before they face the firing squad. Pretti didn’t even get that.

Pretti was just one of the thousands of Minneapolis residents who have been called to resist the occupation of their city by ICE. Every day, as immigrant families in the Twin Cities hide in their homes, those with citizenship brave the streets to bring them groceries and medicine. Patrols of local parents supervise school and daycare drop off, so that children and parents won’t be snatched away by agents; others follow ICE vehicles in their cars, and look to record as many arrests as possible on video, so that the families of the disappeared can be contacted. Many ordinary people in Minneapolis now wear whistles around their necks as they attempt to go about their daily lives, so that when the gangs of men appear, they can alert those around them with the shrill sounds. “They’re here!” these Minnesotans can be heard calling out in the videos that now emerge daily from a city under siege. “Stay inside!”

What these people are doing is protecting their neighbors, seeking to help those more vulnerable with gestures that are ordinary, effortful and kind. These gestures have also become dangerous. With the slaughter of Good, and now of Pretti, it has become clear that ICE does not want to be watched. They seem to be targeting ordinary Minnesotans – especially the helpers, the observersand the growing masses who are standing up to oppose them. The result is killings of citizens in broad daylight.

In both the Good and Pretti killings, ICE officers reacted to a calm observer with indignant violence. Videos show ICE officers escalating situations and pulling their guns with needless eagerness. In both the Good and Pretti killings, the response of the administration has seemed to suggest that opposing the violent occupation and mass ethnic cleansing operation that ICE is being deployed to conduct is worthy of a death sentence.

It is of course well known by now that ICE agents do not want to be seen. They cover their faces; they drive unmarked cars; they have been told by their own leadership not to wear insignia stating that they work for any of the deportation agencies when they are off the clock. The gangs of masked, armed men committing anonymous violence in the streets of Minneapolis of course evoke past instances of racial terror in America – like the masked men of the Ku Klux Klan, who also did their best to eradicate racial undesirables from American communities.

Perhaps ICE’s homicidal rage at the Americans who film them represents this same refusal to countenance being seen, being witnessed, being documented doing what they are doing to innocent people. In that sense, perhaps their actions towards observers like Good and Pretti exhibit a sense of shame. Some, like Tom Nolan, a former Boston police commander and criminology professor who once advised the DHS on civil rights issues, are calling Pretti’s death at ICE’s hands a stone cold murder. You could also call it the elimination of a witness.

ICE agents know, as we all do, that one day the Trump regime will come to an end. And they know, as more and more of even once reticent Americans are now coming to understand, that there can be no quiet moving on from the Trump era, no calm, forward-looking determination to absolve the Trump regime and its agents of their actions.

Any path back to political stability in the United States must involve a reckoning with what ICE is doing – on the streets, in its camps, and to people like Pretti and Good. Any restoration of something like a republic in America will require, as a precondition, investigations, prosecutions and tribunals to assess and punish those responsible for these actions.

The ICE agents who shot Good and Pretti know that the whole world can see them; they know that their countrymen, enraged and called to heroism and witness, will not look away. If theyare trying to eliminate witnesses, they cannot eliminate us all. There will be an accounting one day, and though Pretti and Good will not live to see it, many of us will – many of the ICE agents now terrorizing America will, too. As the poet wrote, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” These killers, deep down, must know that they will not be forgiven.

It is small comfort to those who loved him that in his last act of witnessing, Pretti has now called thousands more to witness the horrors of their time – no matter the consequences that such a reckoning threatens. After his death, a video of Pretti was released by those who knew him as the nurse at work, at the VA hospital. It is customary there for staff to read out loud a tribute to veterans when one dies in their care.

In the video, Pretti can be seen reading this final salute to an elderly veteran who died in his unit. “Today, we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti reads. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it.” Pretti sacrificed, too. We must all be at least as brave as he was.

  • Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist