Video footage, taken by bystanders from multiple angles, was released for public viewing shortly after an incident near 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis on 24 January 2026. Border Patrol agents were shown to be attacking a man, who had gone to assist two people on the sidewalk who were being pepper-sprayed but was wrestled to the ground for his pains instead and shot from close range at least ten times in his back within five seconds as he lay immobile and defenceless. The federal agents made no attempts at CPR, which only commenced after the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) arrived on the scene, approximately six minutes after the first shot was fired. The victim was identified as 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a native-born US citizen who was employed as an ICU nurse at VA (Veterans Affairs) Medical Center in Minneapolis. His killing followed that of another 37-year-old US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, on 7 January at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross as she sat in the front seat of her car in the Cedars-Riverside neighbourhood of the same city. In both cases, federal agents claimed they were acting in self-defence. Tracee Mergen, a supervisor in FBI’s Minneapolis field office, was even forced to resign rather than be allowed to conduct an inquiry into Agent Ross’s actions.
As is often the case in today’s America, conflicting narratives soon emerged about what had actually happened. Despite the video images, which showed Pretti holding a smartphone in his right hand when he was attacked, and nothing in the other, the Trump administration was quick off the mark to defend what was already being described by some others as an example of state-sponsored terrorism. In an egregious example of victim shaming, references were being made by relevant administration officials to a “would-be assassin” and “domestic terrorist”, intent on inflicting “maximum damage”, even before all evidence had been gathered, while Doug Collins, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, attributed the tragedy to “state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law.” It was alleged that Pretti had approached the killer agents with a loaded 9mm semiautomatic Sig Sauer pistol, and that he was carrying two magazines of ammunition on his person. The handgun had, in fact, been removed by a federal agent even before the first shot was fired. The allegations of malicious intent on the part of Pretti, who had gone to video Border Patrol and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in action, are far from unusual in a country in which the boundaries between truth and falsehood have been gradually and systematically eroded, leading many to doubt and thus abandon what they can see with their own eyes for an alternative logic-defying explanation of events. The cheerleaders for the Trump administration, besides the great man himself, included Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem (aka “ICE Barbie”), Vice President J.D. Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Pretti was only exercising his rights under the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution, allowing him to engage in peaceful protest, and to keep and bear arms, respectively. It is particularly noteworthy that a Republican administration that has supported citizens’ rights to bear arms criticised Pretti for bringing his concealed handgun along with him as a peaceful protester, even though he was not breaking any law, having both a valid concealed carry permit for his licensed firearm as well as no criminal record. Pretti appears to have been a law-abiding citizen with a good heart and a penchant for helping the underprivileged, at odds with the attempts by Trump and his administration to blacken his image.
President Trump appears to have recognised the considerable reputational damage to his image and to that of his administration, as reflected in plunging approval ratings in the face of mass protests in Minneapolis, and has bypassed Noem, sending her deputy, “border czar” and former ICE chief Tom Homan instead to deal with issues on the ground and help de-escalate the situation in the city. The diminutive, preening, and provocative Greg Bovino, commander-at-large of the United States Border Patrol, who described Border Patrol agents as “victims” in the shooting, has been returned to his duties as Border Patrol Federal Agent at the El Centro sector in southern California and is expected to retire soon. Trump has also made some conciliatory noises with respect to two of his arch-foes in Minnesota, Governor Tim Waltz and Mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey, both Democrats.
Driven by political reasons and an appetite for vengeance, the Democrat-led city of Minneapolis has received at least 3,000 ICE agents for a population of around 429,000, although the numbers of undocumented immigrants are much higher in more populous “Red” states further south, such as Florida and Texas. The events in Minneapolis, “a city under siege”, have proved counterproductive for the Trump administration, and instead galvanised support for the demilitarisation of the city from a wide coalition of various groups of citizens, both progressive and conservative. What happens next is anybody’s guess. It is all up to President Trump to decide his next moves as his administration reviews “everything” and for him to apportion blame to his chosen scapegoats, which might include his DHS Secretary. It is hoped that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations branch will conduct a diligent investigation, assisted by the FBI and based on factually accurate information alone. That may, however, be asking for too much.
Ashis Banerjee