In Minnesota, yet another tragic incident involving ICE has unfolded, casting a shadow over the state.
Merely 17 days after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a mother of three, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the streets of Minneapolis witnessed another grim episode. This time, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old male nurse and protester, was the victim, gunned down in broad daylight.
As has become almost routine, the harrowing scene was captured on camera phones. The video, filled with the frantic cries of a woman exclaiming, “What are you doing?” as ICE agents used lethal force, quickly spread across the internet.
In the wake of the shooting, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other high-ranking officials stepped in to defend the actions of ICE. On social media, Trump shared images of a handgun allegedly recovered from Pretti, suggesting that the victim posed a threat.
Republicans have directed their criticism at Minnesota’s Democrats, accusing them of fueling civil unrest and hampering federal efforts to restore order in a city they claim is beset by unchecked migration and widespread criminal activities.
Instead of acknowledging any potential overreach by ICE, the White House maintains that the deaths of individuals like Pretti and Good are the fallout of extreme political dynamics at the state level.
‘Where are the local police?’ asked Trump on social media, provocatively. ‘Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE officers?’
Vance, meanwhile, spoke of ‘engineered chaos’ and ‘far left agitators, working with local authorities.’
Male nurse Alex Pretti lies on the ground after being shot dead, surrounded by ICE agents
Alex Pretti’s killing follows the death of mother-of-three Renee Good, 37, who was also shot by an ICE agent
But the problem for Trump, Vance and co is that, while such arguments appeal to their supporters, simply doubling down on the pro-ICE rhetoric only seems to feed the cycle of violence, and a large majority of Americans are disgusted by the scenes coming out of Minneapolis.
The Department of Homeland Security quickly accused ‘the suspect’ of wanting ‘to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement’. But, even if Pretti was armed, the videos strongly suggest that was not at all the case.
The situation in Minneapolis is spiralling out of control. Good and Pretti – left-liberal Democrats driven increasingly mad by America’s culture wars –truly believed that, under Trump, their nation is turning into a vicious fascist state.
Their deaths only serve to validate such thinking. The killings embolden deranged ‘antifa’ extremists, such as the now infamous local influencer Kyle Wagner, who posts videos urging followers to ‘get your f***king guns and stop these f***king people.’
The right to bear arms under the US constitution, usually a rallying Right-wing cause, has now become a Left-wing cri de coeur.
‘Welcome to America 2026,’ says Wagner, ‘where the Second Amendment is the only thing that is going to keep you protected from literal f***ing Nazi gunmen that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity.’
Most Minnesotans would not normally align themselves with Wagner’s worldview, but in recent weeks a growing number of normally genteel, Democrat supporters have found themselves radicalised by ICE’s martial presence and its brutal behaviour.
A picture of Pretti’s recovered handgun is shown at a briefing held by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem
There are dark whispers of discontent at the highest levels of Homeland Security. It’s understood that Tom Homan, Trump’s ‘immigration czar’, is at odds with Kristi Noem (pictured with Homan), and other senior Trump figures
‘I’m generally a pretty liberal person,’ one bespectacled protester told one broadcaster recently.
‘But when I saw videos of ICE jumping out of unmarked vehicles and nabbing people off the street, that’s when I actually bought my first AR-15 [rifle] … We’re facing tyranny right now and I want to be prepared for that.’
Minneapolis has been a hotbed of discontent ever since the summer of 2020, when George Floyd died under a policeman’s knee, and local protests turned into rioting in cities across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter.
Team Trump remembers the carnage of 2020 well. At the time, a number of senior Republicans felt that, for all his online posturing, Trump didn’t act quickly enough to quell the riots and then duly lost his bid for re-election that year.
His rival, Joe Biden, came to power promising ‘unity’ and an end to the exhausting chaos of Trump.
Now, the second Trump administration appears determined not to repeat the mistake, which is why he and his cabinet continue to defend ‘ICE patriots’ even as officers are filmed gunning down protesters in the streets.
Team 2.0 believes that ICE’s mission – to find and deport as many illegal migrants as possible – has popular support. But voters tend only to back the use of force if it is just and helps restore order. The US public increasingly don’t think that ICE is clearing that bar.
There are dark whispers of discontent at the highest levels of Homeland Security. It’s understood that Tom Homan, Trump’s ‘immigration tsar’, is at odds with Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, and other senior Trump figures, who think that public showdowns between ICE agents and protesters only reinforce Trump’s tough message.
But the killings in Minneapolis give the opposite impression – of an administration that is losing its grip and resorting to unnecessary violence, which only fuels further disturbances.
As the weather heats up and the crunch mid-term elections in November draw closer, the carnage in Minneapolis could spread once more, and prove to be Trump 2.0’s final undoing.
- Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator.
