MINNEAPOLIS—For the second time in two weeks, President Donald Trump’s ICE agents have murdered a person in Minneapolis, this time of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, RN, a nurse and union member at the Minneapolis VA Hospital. The Jan. 24 killing produced increased outrage in Minnesota and nationwide and even more demands for ICE to get out of town before its agents inflict more deaths, kidnappings, and injuries.
Multiple Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents threw Pretti, a member of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3669, to the ground as he was filming them on his phone and also trying to help a woman who was pepper-sprayed at one of the continuing anti-ICE demonstrations in the Twin Cities.
The agents then shot him multiple times, videos from bystanders showed. Pretti’s murder at 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, less than two miles from where Renee Good was killed, produced outrage from bystanders, mourners, and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, AFGE President Everett Kelley, and especially from Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham. Working class organizations outside the U.S. also joined the chorus of condemnation.
U.S. labor mourns fallen federal worker
“The AFL-CIO mourns the senseless killing of another Minneapolis resident by federal agents. Alex Jeffrey Pretti was a VA intensive care unit nurse and a member of AFGE Local 3669—a brother in our union family,” Shuler said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with Alex’s loved ones, his union siblings, and the people of Minneapolis at this devastating time.
“As tens of thousands of Minnesotans made clear peacefully and powerfully Friday, the Trump administration’s horrific operation—and their actions aimed at stoking violence and chaos—must end.
“America’s unions join the call for ICE to immediately leave Minnesota before anyone else is hurt or killed. We demand local authorities conduct a full, transparent investigation that will lead to accountability for this tragic and violent act, and for Congress to use its power to hold ICE accountable.”
Minnesota state AFL-CIO President Burnham was particularly angry.
“For the second time in less than three weeks, a Minnesotan is dead at the hands of ICE,” Burnham said. “While local authorities are still gathering information, we know that Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs Hospital ICU nurse and member of AFGE, is dead. Our hearts are with Alex’s family, friends, loved ones, our community, and his AFGE union family right now as they grieve.
“For Minnesota’s workers of color, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, every commute to work, every trip to the grocery store, and every walk to school has become a genuine risk.”
On Jan. 24, Burnham continued, “tens of thousands of Minnesotans peacefully exercised our right to free speech without incident. When ICE is involved, non-violent protesters and legal observers are gassed, assaulted, and shot.
“Operation Metro Surge”—Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s military-style name for sending more than 3,000 ICE agents to the Twin Cities—“is not and has never been about enforcing immigration law. This is about a president [Trump] who is angry with the people of Minnesota for disagreeing with his policies and is weaponizing the federal government against us in retribution.” Burnham termed Trump’s regime “a hostile federal government.”
As they did when ICE agents killed Good, Homeland Security officials rushed to blame the victim. They had called Good a domestic terrorist. This time, they said Pretti pointed a gun—he carried a registered pistol—at them. He didn’t draw it; ICE agents took it off him. He was pointing his phone and its camera at them when they assaulted him before shooting him.
The narrative of Pretti pulling the pistol is one “nobody outside the department can confirm and that contradicts every publicly available video. We join the calls for a full and transparent investigation into both this killing and the killing of Renee Nicole Good,” added Burnham.
“ICE continues to make everyone less safe, and Minnesota’s labor movement repeats and amplifies our call for them to leave our state immediately.” Burnham also promised active union support for “every worker who has been unlawfully detained” by ICE.
Government Employees (AFGE) President Kelley joined in the distress and denunciations. He added the killing is a result of a deliberate policy by ICE and its masters—Trump and Noem—though he did not name them. Early last year, Trump named AFGE “an enemy.”
“This tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. It is the direct result of an administration that has chosen reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership and de-escalation,” Kelley added.
“For months, this administration has pursued immigration actions designed to provoke confrontation rather than solve problems. Their actions have raised tensions in communities across the country while stoking fear, chaos, and division. Federal workers have been placed at the center of this political theater, turned into symbols instead of being treated as the public servants they are. That kind of leadership failure has consequences, making everything more dangerous for the public and law enforcement alike.
“Today, those consequences include the death of an AFGE member.”
Solidarity from abroad
Condemnation also poured in from labor and working-class organizations internationally.
The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME)—a coordination center within the Greek union movement—issued a statement denouncing the “executions carried out by the criminals of ICE in the U.S.A.” PAME expressed its solidarity with the workers and trade unions that rose up in this past weekend’s general strike in Minnesota. The group said it stands with those fighting “to protect migrants and their families and to put a stop to state terror.”
From Mexico, the Communist Party said it stands together with “the people and workers of Minneapolis and of the entire U.S.A. who are fighting against the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-immigrant, and repressive policy of the Trump administration.”
The Communist Party of Britain slammed Trump and his violence deportation raids, saying that the events in Minnesota showed it was time to “build the united front of the working class to stop ICE fascism.” The party diagnosed recent developments as evidence that “U.S. imperialism is bringing home the vengeance of an empire in decline.”
It warned that political forces in Britain—Trump’s followers in Nigel Farage’s Reform party—are planning to create an ICE equivalent if they win the next election. The scheme to deport 600,000 people would “imply paramilitary policing of Britain’s towns and cities and the physical suppression of civilian populations”—exactly as is happening now in Minneapolis.
This article features reporting from Press Associates and material provided by the International Department, CPUSA.
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