Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, a Minneapolis resident and intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, was shot and killed during an encounter involving federal immigration enforcement personnel in south Minneapolis, near the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, a mother of three who had just moved to the city, was shot dead by a federal immigration agent two weeks prior. The shooting took place in a residential area less than a mile from George Floyd Square, an area still symbolically and politically charged following the 2020 killing that triggered nationwide protests over policing in the United States.
These cold-blooded-state-funded murders were the foreseeable outcome of a federal enforcement surge that has turned parts of Minneapolis into occupied space, with armed agents operating in residential neighbourhoods under vague mandates and minimal accountability.
In both cases, civilians were killed amid confusion, proximity, and escalation. In both cases, the state’s response was blaming the victims and bluntly lying to the world who watched both shootings from multiple angles over and over again. State murder, police murder, fascist murder.
Protests have spread, legal challenges are mounting, and Minnesota’s leadership is openly clashing with federal authorities. Yet trust, already fragile after years of contested policing, has fractured further. A city that became a global symbol of resistance to state violence is again watching civilians die at the hands of armed officials, this time under the banner of immigration control.
This is how democratic erosion looks in practice. We are watching the normalisation of unfounded force, and true fascism live on our screens.
The Trump administration is asserting its power. Domestically and internationally, more than ever before. Fascism is showing its teeth again.
I’m not looking for WW2 answers anymore. I've got VIP tickets to the first row to watch another world war unfold, right in front of my very eyes.