This Saturday, Minneapolis said goodbye to another tragic day of protests against the pulse that Donald Trump has been inflicting on the city for weeks with a vigil in memory of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse who was shot dead in the morning by border patrol agents whom he was recording with his cell phone.
Hundreds of people gathered in a park near the scene, chanting “No one is illegal” and “Power to the people.” In front of the place where Pretti, immobilized on the ground, was shot several times (about 10, according to the videos of the incident), the protesters refused to go home during the afternoon, despite the fact that the thermometer read 25 degrees below zero.
It was the picture of an atypical Saturday night in a city on the edge, in which the Government has some three thousand federal agents deployed in an anti-immigration operation that has already claimed the lives of two American citizens. A couple of weeks ago an agent of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the executing arm of the xenophobic agenda of the president of the United States, killed Renée Good, a mother of three, while she was protesting inside her car. He was also 37 years old.
As with her, the United States Government has tried to blame the victim, painting Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” “who arrived armed,” according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to prevent an arrest, and with the intention of “causing a massacre.”
As with Good, witnesses and videos tell a different story. According to authorities, Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a veterans hospital, was carrying a .9mm pistol for which he was licensed in a state, Minnesota, where it is legal to carry it. The study of images taken by other protesters from different points of view indicates that he did not manage to remove her, and that several officers restrained him when he stood between them and a woman who had been sprayed with pepper spray. Pretti had his cell phone in one hand and nothing in the other. Once he was forcibly subdued, the agents noticed that he was carrying a gun and disarmed him. Then the shooting began at point-blank range.
Despite this evidence, and without waiting for the conclusions of the investigation, Trump defined him as a “gunman” in a message on his social network, Truth, which he accompanied with a photo of the gun that the authorities claim that Pretti was carrying. It was not a surprise, but the president of the United States once again missed the opportunity to unite the country in the tragedy and turned the death of a compatriot into a pretext to attack his enemies: in this case, the Democratic politicians who control the state and the city (which are actually the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, separated by the Mississippi), and the Somali community. Established for decades in Minnesota, the Republican holds it as a whole responsible for a multimillion-dollar fraud in the management of federal aid.
The problem for the president, and his Administration, is that Pretti’s death happened in full view of the entire world. “Thank God we have the video!” exclaimed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in a press appearance. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Walz that was released Saturday night, blaming him and other Democratic elected officials for allowing “lawlessness” in Minneapolis. “The time has come for state and local officials in your state to change course,” the letter demands.
“Disgusting lies”
The victim’s family defined the White House version in a statement as “disgusting lies (…), reprehensible and disgusting.” “Alex was a kind soul who deeply loved his family and friends, as well as the American veterans he cared for as a nurse. (…) Clearly, he did not have a weapon when he was attacked by the murderous and cowardly thugs of ICE.”
The news of Pretti’s death sparked new protests this Saturday in the city used to rising up: almost six years ago, it was here where the fuse of the anti-racist riots that ignited throughout the country broke out when a white police officer murdered the African-American George Floyd. Although there is no need to go that far back: one day after ICE detained Liam Conejo, a five-year-old boy whose frightened image has now become a symbol, Minneapolis took to the streets last Friday in a demonstration that defied the three thousand agents sent by Trump and the very low temperatures. Hundreds of businesses in the Twin Cities joined a general strike.
