Summary
Federal immigration officers have shot and killed a man in Minneapolis, sparking further protests
Minnesota senators identify him as Alex Pretti, adding that he was a 37-year-old Minneapolis man, a nurse and US citizen. His parents describe him as a “kindhearted soul”
The killing comes less than three weeks after American citizen Renee Good was shot dead by an immigration agent in the city
Federal and state officials have conflicting accounts of the events which lead to Pretti’s death
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says agents fired “defensive shots” after Pretti “reacted violently”, while Minnesota Governor Tim Walz says the account of events from federal authorities is “nonsense” and “lies”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump accuses the mayor of Minneapolis and Governor Walz of inciting an “insurrection”
Vigils and demonstrations are taking place after the incident, with images showing clashes with law enforcement
Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters that a 37-year-old man died in hospital on Saturday after being shot multiple times. The man was a Minneapolis resident and a US citizen, O’Hara said.
Thousands of demonstrators braved bitter cold to march through the streets of Minneapolis on Friday demand an end to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in their city, part of a wider “ICE OUT!” show of defiance that organizers billed as a general strike.
On a day that started with temperatures as low as minus 20 Fahrenheit (minus 29 Celsius), organizers said as many as 50,000 people took to the streets, a figure that Reuters could not verify, as Minneapolis police did not respond to a request for a crowd estimate.
Many demonstrators later gathered indoors at the Target Center, a sports arena with a capacity of 20,000 that was more than half full.
Organizers and participants said scores of businesses across Minnesota closed for the day and workers headed to street protests and marches, which followed weeks of sometimes violent confrontations between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters opposed to Trump’s surge.
Just a day earlier, Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis in a demonstration of support for ICE officers and to ask local leaders and activists to reduce tensions, saying ICE was carrying out an important mission to detain immigration violators.
In one of the more dramatic protests, local police arrested dozens of clergy members who sang hymns and prayed as they knelt on a road at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport in calling for Trump to withdraw the 3,000 federal law enforcement officers sent to the area.
Organizers said their demands included legal accountability for the ICE agent who shot dead Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in her car this month as she monitored ICE activities.
They ignored commands to clear the road by officers from local police departments, who arrested and zip-tied dozens of the protesters, who did not resist, before putting them onto buses. Reuters observed dozens of arrests, and organizers said about 100 clergy members were arrested.
Faith in Minnesota, a nonprofit advocacy group that helped organize the protest, said the clergy were also calling attention to airport and airline workers who they said had been detained by ICE at work. The group asked that airline companies “stand with Minnesotans in calling for ICE to immediately end its surge in the state.”
Across the state, bars, restaurants and shops were closing for the day, organizers said, in what was intended to be the largest display yet of opposition to the federal government’s surge.
“Make no mistake, we are facing a full federal occupation by the United States government through the arm of ICE on unceded Dakota land,” Rachel Dionne-Thunder, vice president of the Indigenous Protector Movement, told the arena crowd.
She was one of a series of indigenous, religious, labor and community leaders to speak, calling on ICE to withdraw and for a thorough investigation into Good’s shooting.
“We’ve seen an agency that seems to have no guardrails, as they have caused this pain and suffering all across Minnesota,” said Lizz Winstead, a comedian and abortion rights advocate who served as host.
TRUMP ELECTED TO CRACK DOWN
Trump, a Republican, was elected in 2024 largely on his platform of enforcing immigration laws with a promise to crack down on violent criminals, saying Democratic President Joe Biden was too lax in border security.
But Trump’s aggressive deployment of federal law enforcement into Democratic-led cities and states has further fueled America’s political polarization, especially since the shooting of Good, the detention of a U.S. citizen who was taken from his home in his underwear, and the detention of school children including a 5-year-old boy.
Miguel Hernandez, a community organizer who closed his business Lito’s Bakery for the day, put on four layers, wool socks and a parka before heading out to protest.
“If this were any other time, no one would’ve gone out,” he said, bracing for the weather. “For us, it’s a message of solidarity with our community, that we see the pain and misery that’s going on in the streets, and it’s a message to our politicians that they have to do more than grandstand on the news.”
The numerous Fortune 500 companies that call Minnesota home have refrained from public statements about the immigration raids. Minneapolis-based Target, which has come under fire in the last year for retreating from its public commitment to diversity policies, has faced more criticism for not speaking out about activity at its stores. State lawmakers have pressed the company for details of its guidance to employees if and when ICE officers show up at stores.
The company declined a request for comment. Reuters also contacted Minnesota-based UnitedHealth, Medtronic, Abbott Laboratories, Best Buy, Hormel, General Mills, 3M and Fastenal. None immediately responded to requests for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said a US Border Patrol agent shot and killed a person who had a handgun and resisted attempts to be disarmed.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the agent fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.
Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out at Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. He shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered and said: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”
The Republican president said that the Democratic governor and mayor “are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!”
‘He was a good man’
In bystander videos, Pretti can be seen standing in the street and filming agents with his cellphone.
The videos show one of the agents apparently deploying pepper spray at Pretti and other protesters. While Pretti attempts to block the spray and help other protesters, several agents wrestle him to the ground and begin striking him with blows to the head and body.
As they hold Pretti on the ground, one of the agents draws his weapon and multiple shots are fired. Pretti’s body can be seen in the street.
Bellingcat, a group of researchers and journalists who conduct open-source investigations, said footage of the shooting “appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired”.
“Two different agents are visibly firing their guns, with at least 10 shots being heard in total. Most of them are fired after a brief delay, when the man is already lying motionless on the ground,” the group said.
O’Hara, the police chief, said police believed the person was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry”.
Minnesota allows the open carrying of firearms with a permit.
Pretti’s family released a statement on Saturday evening saying they are “heartbroken but also very angry,” and calling him a kindhearted soul who wanted to make a difference in the world through his work as a nurse.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the family statement said.
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
Trump and senior members of his administration have justified the deployment of ICE and other federal officers to Minneapolis as part of the president’s pledge to carry out the largest deportation operation in the country’s history.
But residents and elected officials have condemned the Trump administration for its anti-immigration policies and said the presence of heavily armed officers on their streets is not making people safer.
Speaking during Saturday’s news conference alongside the city’s police chief, Mayor Frey denounced the Trump administration for its continued crackdown.
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummelling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” Frey said. “How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?
“How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realises that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values? How many times must local and national leaders … plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognise that this is not creating safety in our city?”
Several other local and state leaders also called on Trump to end the federal deployment after Saturday’s killing.
“To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW,” US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota, wrote on X.
Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar called the shooting “an execution” and accused Trump of transforming Minneapolis into a “war zone”.
Calls for calm
The shooting drew hundreds of protesters to the neighbourhood to confront the armed and masked agents, who deployed tear gas and flashbang grenades.
The protesters screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo”.
The situation calmed after federal agents left the area, though protesters remained on the streets for hours afterward.
Walz, the governor, said he had been in contact with the White House after the shooting. He said on X that state and local authorities were “doing everything possible to de-escalate” the situation. The City of Minneapolis meanwhile urged residents “to remain calm and avoid the immediate area” of the incident.
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Washington, DC, said the incident has further ignited tensions in Minneapolis, which she described as a “tinderbox”.
“It is very much a head-to-head between Trump and his federal authorities, and local and state authorities in Minnesota,” Zhou-Castro explained, noting that the fight has been brewing since mass protests broke out in Minneapolis after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020.
Amy Koch, a Republican political strategist and a former Republican majority leader of the Minnesota Senate, called for a clear investigation into the shooting.
“It is a very dark time, and it is intolerable. And it is absolutely imperative that leaders, both President Trump and Governor Walz, de-escalate, take a very deep tactical pause on any operations going on, and allow federal and state agencies to work together to investigate this situation, and figure out what went on, before anything else is continued,” she told Al Jazeera.
“This is an operation that is not successful, and it needs to stop. It needs a pause, and it needs state and federal officials to work together to determine what happened and how we can move forward safely.”
Reuters and aljazeera
Witness did not see Pretti holding gun – advocacy grouppublished at 07:08
In a reported affidavit, an unnamed eyewitness who recorded video of the shooting says she did not see Alex Pretti with a gun in the moments before he was shot by federal agents.
The document, which has the woman’s name redacted out, was posted on X by a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, external, a migrant advocacy group.
She states that she got involved as an observer after hearing whistles alerting people to the presence of ICE agents on an avenue near her home.
A man directing traffic, whom she later identifies as Pretti, helped her find a parking space. He then filmed an ICE agent with his phone as the agent threatened other observers with pepper spray.
An ICE agent, she says, then pushed a woman to the ground and released pepper spray.
Pretti, according to her account, tried to help the woman to her feet despite being sprayed himself and was grabbed by other ICE agents.
He did not appear to resist, she says, adding: “I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.”
BBC
