Nonpolitical Media Has Been Flooded With Outrage at Alex Pretti's Murder

Armed federal forces of ICE and Border Patrol—below referred to collectively as “ICE,” since they’re working in concert and much of the public doesn’t distinguish between them—invaded Minnesota, acting like secret police and repressive paramilitaries rather than law enforcement, killing two innocent people, Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The officers have been met by an outpouring of nonviolent resistance, including thousands of regular Minnesotans spotting, following, warning others about, and verbally denouncing the invaders.

By relentlessly documenting ICE abuses—in subzero temperatures, taking on risk of arrest, assault, and death—Minnesota’s ICE-watchers, along with supportive demonstrations from hundreds of clergy and others, have gotten the horrors into more information streams. More people are paying attention, undermining Trump regime lies, and shifting public stances. On its own that won’t reverse America’s democratic backsliding, but it’s a significant step, and shows how the Trump regime is faltering. 

Reddit was swamped with information about Minnesota, as anti-ICE posts dominated the main feed, and appeared in discussions of just about any topic. Knitting, biking, comic books, pop music, you name it. Football subreddits were talking about it on Saturday, even though the NFL had playoff games on Sunday. Climbing subreddits saw it, even though climber Alex Honnold—subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo—had just scaled a skyscraper in Taiwan without a harness. One subreddit about people patting their cat’s butt like bongos got attention after the moderator announced “if you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you’re not welcome in this sub.”

Many of them, including the cat bongo person, opened by saying they know the forum topic is not politics, and sorry for bringing politics into it, but ICE’s actions are too appalling not to. Like this one in a football subreddit:

But many Redditors are denizens of internet culture, and probably more aware of online political discourse than most, even if they avoid participating in it. Yet a similar awareness and outrage could be seen on Instagram.

According to Charlie Warzel, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the tech-and-media-focused Galaxy Brain newsletter, a flood of Instagram activity on ICE in Minnesota “from the most normie, i don’t really talk about politics accounts suggests something different.” He offered this as an illustrative example:

As Warzel put it, “When the driving range guys are talking about masked agents of the state you’ve probably made a strategic error if you’re the state.”

Major media organizations have had a similar reaction. It’s the top story at many outlets, most of which have cast the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul as victims and the federal forces as aggressive invaders, rather than credulously repeating whatever the Trump administration says, or adopting a he said-she said frame that shies from identifying who is telling the truth and who isn’t. The New York Times published close breakdowns of video of Renée Good’s killing and now Alex Pretti’s, concluding that they didn’t pose a threat and the government is lying. The Republican-friendly Wall St. Journal and New York Post both ran editorials calling on Trump to pull back ICE.

That might not change the Trump administration’s harsh treatment of immigrants—and nonwhite people they say look like immigrants, including U.S. citizens—but it does impact public opinion. No matter how Americans get their information, there’s a good chance they heard about federal officers killing Renée Good and Alex Pretti, harassing and violently repressing people, and generally acting like the Gestapo, like figures Americans think of as villains from movies and history. The more who hear about this and recoil, the weaker the regime gets. 

For example, after ICE killed Alex Pretti and some national Republicans defended it, Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Madel dropped out and announced that he’s leaving the party. ICE’s operations have “expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats,” he stated, engaging in “retribution on the citizens of our state.” It’s a remarkable shift, because a week ago Madel was providing pro bono legal counsel for Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who killed Renée Good.

GOP Senator Rand Paul, chair of the Homeland Security Committee called on the heads of ICE and Border Patrol to testify in an open hearing. And while nearly all Congressional Republicans won’t criticize Trump, more have hesitated to parrot the administration’s obvious lies this time. Now Trump has reportedly removed Gregory Bovino, who was leading the vicious campaign in Minnesota, deliberately provoking residents, and proudly getting a lot of it on camera.

Each of these won’t change much on their own, but it shows how even this White House is sensitive to public opinion, especially from people they consider theirs. Things like that add up.

Why this killing resonated more

It’s not fair or good, but nevertheless true, that the American public sees some victims of state violence as more sympathetic than others. In September last year, an ICE officer shot and killed Silverio Villegas González near Chicago. He was in the U.S. illegally, fled when officers stopped his car, and a hospital toxicology report found that he had cocaine in his system. That definitely does not mean he deserved an instant death sentence—he was running away, not towards the officer, there’s no possible self-defense argument—but it does mean a lot of the public would find him less sympathetic, and the story didn’t get much attention.

Renée Good and Alex Pretti were only the latest people killed by ICE in Trump’s second term. At least 32 people have died in custody, but those have been out of the public eye. By contrast, the Good and Pretti killings are on video from multiple angles—credit to ICE-watching protestors for that—and any honest viewing shows they weren’t a physical threat to officers. That recalls a police officer killing George Floyd in 2020, captured on a painstakingly long video that unambiguously showed Floyd posed no threat, prompting large Black Lives Matter protests. Also similar to 2020, a lot of Americans are stuck inside, spending more time online—then from COVID, this past weekend from a big winter storm—which likely increased sharing and discussion, helping the incident go viral.

Good and Pretti were both U.S. citizens, so there’s no argument they were a legitimate target for immigration arrest like González. They’re both white, which shouldn’t matter, but likely resulted in more “that could’ve been me” sympathy from white Americans. Good was an award-winning poet and mother who had kids’ stuffed animals in her car. Pretti worked in healthcare, and had a beard. Good’s last words, captured on video, were calmly telling the ICE officer “I’m not mad at you.” Pretti’s were asking a pepper-sprayed woman “are you okay?” Neither’s appearance looked remotely like the stereotype of a left-wing radical.

ICE killing Renée Good got public attention, and prompted more people to protest, but right-wing voices still found ways to excuse it. Commentators such as radio host Erick Erickson and various influencers on Elon Musk’s X denounced Good as an “AWFUL” (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal), oozing misogynistic hatred. Fox News host Jesse Watters dismissed Good’s death by saying she was a lesbian with “pronouns in her [social media] bio,” which to many sounds like a ridiculous thing to care about, but to MAGA marks her as a culture war enemy who should be treated as lesser.

But with Alex Pretti, prominent right-wing figures are having trouble. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and senior White House official Stephen Miller tried calling Pretti a domestic terrorist. But the false accusation flopped so badly that two days later White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt walked it back, telling reporters “I have not heard the president characterize Mr Pretti in that way.”

Pretti was a straight white man, things MAGA usually associates with “us” rather than “them.” And unlike Renée Good, he was on foot, so ICE defenders’ lie that Good tried to hit an officer with a car couldn’t apply. In multiple ways, Pretti embodied things Republicans advocate, such that supporting his murder exposes them as utterly hollow.

In recent years, right-wing figures have obsessed over masculinity, casting themselves as “strong men” who will do what is necessary to “create good times,” after “weak men” created today’s “hard times.” Alex Pretti put himself at risk to defend his community, and his final act was protecting an injured woman, while ICE officers hide behind masks, and commentators post about “strong men” from the safety of their homes.

Republicans often claim to care about veterans. Pretti spent a lot of his time caring for veterans as an intensive care nurse for the VA. Here, for example, is video of Pretti reading out the “final salute” of an American veteran who just passed, which the veteran’s son shared online after Pretti’s murder along with this note:

Republicans claim to value gun rights and work to allow legal carry in more places, arguing that it’s important for people to be armed to protect themselves, and that it’s wrong to restrict responsible gun owners based on the actions of irresponsible and criminal ones. Alex Pretti was a responsible gun owner. He had the proper license, and kept the gun in a holster. The only thing in his hands when officers knocked him down was a phone. Video clearly shows Pretti on the ground, held down by officers, when one takes the gun out of the holster and moves it away before another officer shoots Pretti in the back. Then others opened fire. They shot 10 bullets into him in a few seconds.

Yet prominent MAGA figures still denounced Pretti while trying to lie their way out of public criticism. For example, FBI Director Kash Patel on Fox News argued: “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have a right to break the law.”

Pretti clearly was not breaking the law, and did not take out his gun or threaten anyone with it. And the notion that it’s inherently wrong to bring a firearm to a protest would surprise many Republicans, who celebrated Kyle Rittenhouse for doing just that at a protest in Wisconsin in 2020.

The difference is Rittenhouse had a rifle which he brandished, unlike Pretti who had a pistol he kept holstered. And Rittenhouse shot and killed two people—a Wisconsin jury found him not guilty of homicide on grounds of self-defense as defined by state law—while Pretti didn’t shoot anyone. For that, Rittenhouse became a cause celebre on the right, invited for a meeting and photo-op with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, speaking at events hosted by Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA to standing ovation, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This isn’t exactly hypocrisy, because like other fascists, hardcore Trumpists are quasi-nihilists who believe in little besides their own power and hurting people they don’t like. The consistent principle of “we can do whatever we feel like, you have to take it” fits both pro-Rittenhouse and anti-Pretti stances.

But not all Republicans see it that way. Some actually meant the things they said about gun rights. The NRA did not accept the government’s explanation and called for a “full investigation."

Actress Melissa Joan Hart, a conservative Trump voter who starred in God’s Not Dead 2 and a prolific instagrammer with nearly two million followers, replied to the official Homeland Security account:

Growing divisions like that are, eventually, how a political coalition falls apart. Even authoritarian governments need a critical mass of public support, lest they lose the ability to operate.

It won’t happen all at once, and things will likely get worse before they get better, but Team Trump’s authoritarian project is failing. They apparently imagined Americans would cheer or cower in the face of violent repression, but the opposite has happened. The regime’s secret police force is having trouble handling America’s 16th largest metro area. Doing a lot of harm, yes, but not in control, and frustrated by the public reaction.

When the Trump regime falls, we’ll likely look back on ICE killing Renée Good and Alex Pretti as among the turning points.

Featured image is ICE Agents in Minneapolis After Shooting, by Chad David