Once Alex Pretti was dead, the explanations began.

Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that Pretti was “brandishing a gun” and trying to kill Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) federal agents. Both Noem and Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff who is responsible for the conduct of immigration policy, described Pretti as a “domestic terrorist.” The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement stating that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

But then the cell phone video emerged and was dissected minutely by the New York Times and CNN. It reminded me of the song with the following line: “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes.” Our eyes won because Pretti was being held face down on the street by four ICE agents and was obviously not a threat to anyone when he was shot in the back “at least” 10 times. The “lying” had been done by Noem and Miller, no great surprise to anyone who has observed them over the last year.

The federal government has sent 3,000 immigration agents to Minneapolis, 2,000 of whom are ICE employees and 1,000 of whom are employed by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. The difference is that CBP employees typically are snaring desperate people trying to cross the Rio Grande. Those people are certainly not blowing whistles, using their cell phones to record the interactions or calling the CBP agents fascists or other derogatory names. Indeed, it turns out that the two shooters were CBP employees from South Texas. These were the wrong fellows to entrust with a gun in an urban protest environment. Even to the ordinary observer there was absolutely no threat whatsoever as other the agents were holding Pretti on the ground.

According to the Poynter Institute, ICE has hired an additional 12,000 agents in the last year (2025) and the “training” time for new agents has been cut in half. To place this in perspective, at the beginning of 2025 ICE employed 20,000 agents so the increase has been more than 50%. So too, the CBP has ramped up its hiring, and both agencies are paying bonuses to attract and keep employees. It is not a reach to predict that both agencies will double their pre-2025 employment in the very near future.

Pretti was a pain in the butt to the immigration agents. I suspect they knew his name but they surely knew who he was since he was on the street often with his camera and his whistle. As it turns out, he had an altercation with a different group of ICE employees about 10 days before he was murdered. The video of that interaction shows him spitting on the window of a ICE vehicle and then kicking the back of the vehicle twice so as to dislodge one of the rear tail lights .The ICE agent who was the target of the spitting, got out of the car and tussled with Pretti and then gave up, got back in the car and left. For my money, Pretti should’ve been arrested then and there for damage to government property.

The characterization of Pretti as a caring and helpful ICU nurse is probably true but it doesn’t jive with carrying a gun even though it was “legal.” The fact remains that he was murdered and posed no threat to anyone.

Pretti’s death appears to be the beginning of a sustained national reaction against ICE. The White House reaction was telling. The commander of the Minneapolis surge was demoted and sent to California. Stephen Miller is the Darth Vader of the Trump immigration policy. He immediately called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” but, after the video had been widely viewed, went to the friendly confines of Fox News to opine that the agents may not have followed the “protocol” established by the White House (meaning him). In fact, those agents had followed his original protocol and, when it went sideways, Miller had to invent a new protocol.

This is all you have to know about Alex Pretti‘s death. A man was being held face down on the street and then this happened.

Bang/bang/bang/bang/bang/bang/bang/bang/bang/bang.

And then he was dead with at least 10 shots in his back.

Streets of Minneapolis (by Bruce Springsteen)