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A Citizen Murdered for Caring
Alex Pretti, ICE, and the Urgency of Accountability
Guest article by Dina Doll
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Today, in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old man, was murdered on the street for trying to help a woman stand up after she was pushed by ICE agents and slipped on an icy sidewalk. A precious life was treated with shocking carelessness by federal agents who seemed to believe they were acting out a role in a mafia-style movie, continuing to fire bullets into his body even after he was lifeless on the ground.
The entire interaction, from the moment Alex Pretti was seen calmly and quietly filming ICE to the moment he was dead, was about sixty seconds.
Sixty seconds.
In sixty seconds, he was pushed. In sixty seconds, he was pepper sprayed. In sixty seconds, he was yanked, forced to the ground, and killed. In sixty seconds, agents of the federal government decided that trying to help someone up warranted an execution.
In sixty seconds, a man who had spent his life caring for others, who had apparently served as a nurse in the Veterans Affairs Health Care System, was deemed unworthy of life by masked men acting above the law.
That reality is so disturbing it is almost impossible to absorb: that the government can kill a man so casually in America. This ICE agent seemed to use lethal force with a level of confidence that no immediate consequences would follow.
In this moment we will mourn the death of Alex Pretti and grieve with his family and friends. But then we must take action to honor his life, the life of Renée Good, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and the countless others subjected to ICE violence without accountability. Action must include state murder charges against Jonathan Ross, not only because he must face consequences for the murder of Renée Good, but because, as with all criminal prosecutions, holding him accountable sends a message of deterrence to other ICE agents. If we treat ICE agents as though they are above the law, then these agents will continue to act like they are above the law.
Senate Democrats must also block the ICE funding bill now on their desks. We are well past the time for angry speeches and wordy tweets. Money is the best lever Democrats can use immediately. No agency that has killed two American citizens in broad daylight for the world to see in the span of two weeks deserves one cent.
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And we must counter the Republican propaganda that because Alex Pretti was carrying a licensed gun, the ICE shooting was justified, even though the weapon was never brandished or used by Pretti during the encounter. Let’s call out the Second Amendment crowd hypocrisy. These same voices defended Kyle Rittenhouse, who marched with an AK-47 through a protest but apparently “didn’t escalate the situation” as he indiscriminately pointed his rifle at people. Just this week, the Supreme Court MAGA justices ruled that a Hawaii law that banned weapons inside private businesses without the owners’ consent treated the Second Amendment as a second-class right. Well, I hate to break it to the MAGA justices, but ICE just treated the Second Amendment right to carry not merely as a second-class right but as a basis for the death penalty.
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We must take all these actions to honor those who have lost their lives, to honor the families ripped apart by ICE, and to lift up our democracy in the face of federal action that is taking a hatchet to the pillars that keep our democracy standing.
But tonight we mourn a 37-year-old man who lost his life for nothing more than exercising the power and responsibility of being a citizen in the face of tyranny.
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Dina Doll is an experienced attorney and legal analyst. She hosts the MissTrial podcast on MeidasTouch and co-hosts Unprecedented on Legal AF. Dina also serves as the legal expert for Access Hollywood’s Trial Files and provides regular legal commentary for CNN, NewsNation, and other national media outlets. In addition to her media work, she is a delegate to the California Democratic Party, a community activist, and a City Library Commissioner.
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