The man who died this Saturday in Minneapolis due to shots fired by federal agents has been identified as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who worked in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a veterans hospital in this city in the state of Minnesota, according to relatives and acquaintances who have told local media.
Pretti, a native of Illinois, studied nursing at the University of Minnesota and earned his degree to practice nursing in 2021.
Pretti’s family has confirmed to the media that the man had participated in protests that took place in Minneapolis after immigration agents killed another woman in this city less than three weeks ago as part of the massive raids against migrants ordered by the Government of US President Donald Trump.
The Minnesota Registered Nurses Organization in turn confirmed Pretti’s death by publishing a statement in which it lamented the tragedy and stated that the nursing community in the state is mourning the event.
Images posted online show more than half a dozen immigration agents struggling with the man before shooting him at point-blank range.
The Department of Homeland Security, which directs immigration services, has assured that the man was carrying a semi-automatic weapon and two full magazines and that its agents acted in self-defense.
The Governor of Minnesota, Democrat Mike Walz, has ordered the deployment of the state National Guard to guarantee security in the city, where part of the citizenry has protested against the large-scale raids.
Large-scale raids in Minneapolis
The large-scale raids in Minneapolis, which have seen the arrival of five times the number of federal agents than the city’s entire police force, were ordered by the Trump Administration in early January, when a conservative YouTuber’s documentary brought cases of federal funds misappropriated by daycares run by members of the Somali community back into focus.
Third shooting in two weeks
This Friday, thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis to denounce abuses committed in recent weeks in ICE operations after, on January 7, another federal agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Nicole Good. A week later, a Venezuelan citizen was shot in the leg.
This mobilization was framed in a great day of protest in which the organizers have called for labor, school and consumer strikes, “to unitedly oppose the actions of the federal government against the state”, within the ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest movement that encompasses more than one hundred organizations such as unions, civil rights groups and religious entities.
The Government led by Donald Trump launched the Metro Surge anti-immigration operation last December in Minnesota that the tenant of the White House has justified by claiming an increase in crime. The actions of the agents, such as the death of Good or the arrest of a five-year-old child, have unleashed outrage among the state’s population.
