Alex Pretti Is Dead: A Call for Accountability and Justice

A man is dead.

His name was Alex Pretti. He was 37 years old. He was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA who spent his days keeping veterans alive. He was a U.S. citizen. He had no violent criminal history. He was legally carrying a registered firearm. He was legally filming federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on the morning of January 24, 2026.

And now he's gone.

Shot and killed by Border Patrol agents in broad daylight. Approximately ten shots fired over five seconds. Bullets in his back. Officers continuing to shoot after his body lay motionless on the pavement.

That alone should stop every other conversation. Because when the state kills a citizen, justice isn't optional. It's a right. The people of Minnesota are entitled to answers. The American public is entitled to transparency. And Alex Pretti's parents are entitled to accountability.

If a federal officer overstepped their authority : as the videos appear to indicate : then that officer should be charged and face a jury of his peers. Not reassigned. Not put on administrative leave. Not buried in an "internal review." Charged.

That's not revenge. That's the rule of law.

This Isn't Complicated. It's Just Being Spun.

The Department of Homeland Security immediately pushed a narrative: that Pretti approached agents with a handgun and posed a deadly threat.

But multiple videos tell a different story. Reuters, the BBC, The New York Times, CNN, and The Guardian all concluded from video recordings that Pretti was holding a cell phone, not a gun, in the moments before being tackled. A frame-by-frame analysis by the BBC reached the same conclusion. Two sworn witnesses stated that Pretti did not brandish a weapon.

According to The New York Times, agents yelled that Pretti had a gun approximately eight seconds after he had already been pinned to the ground.

Those are not minor discrepancies. Those are not details you wave away with bureaucratic language. Those are the difference between justified self-defense and an unjustified killing.

This administration is playing a wicked game of Twister right now, trying to contort reality into something that fits a talking point instead of confronting what's on video. They want this to be "chaos," "confusion," "split-second decision-making."

But a man being tackled, restrained, and shot is not chaos. It's a sequence of decisions.

And sequences of decisions can be judged.

Justice Means Charges If the Evidence Warrants It

I don't enjoy singling out an individual officer. I don't need a villain for emotional satisfaction.

But this is how justice works in a functioning society.

If a civilian killed someone under these circumstances : tackled, pinned, then shot repeatedly : they would be arrested, charged, and tried. Full stop.

Uniforms do not grant immunity from the criminal code. Badges do not nullify the Bill of Rights. Federal agencies do not get a separate justice system.

If the evidence shows that an officer violated use-of-force standards or committed a criminal act, then he should be charged and face a jury of his peers. Not because he's evil. Not because we need a scapegoat. But because that's what accountability is.

The moment we decide some government employees are above criminal scrutiny is the moment the rule of law becomes a slogan instead of a reality.

We Empowered This. We Don't Get to Act Surprised.

Here's the part we need to be honest about.

We did not accidentally create this outcome.

We have deputized ICE and CBP to act like a domestic occupation force. We have sent armed federal agents deep into American cities. We have given them broad authority, weak oversight, and political cover. We have tolerated rhetoric that frames immigrants as vermin, invaders, and existential threats.

And then we act shocked when they behave like what we hired them to be.

You don't build a militarized enforcement culture and then pretend brutality is an anomaly. You don't tell agencies their mission is to "purge" the country of unwanted people and then clutch your pearls when they treat civilians like obstacles. You don't indulge every racist impulse in our politics and then act surprised when it shows up in street-level behavior.

This wasn't a freak accident. It was a predictable outcome of the policy and cultural choices we've made.

Let's Talk About What We're Actually Enforcing

This is the part that makes the entire situation even more grotesque.

The offenses ICE and CBP are primarily tasked with enforcing are not violent crimes.

Overstaying a visa is a civil violation. Being in the U.S. without proper documentation is a misdemeanor.

We are spending billions of dollars deploying armed federal agents to hunt people for civil and low-level offenses. Billions that could be spent fixing our broken immigration system. Housing veterans. Feeding hungry families. Funding medicine. Supporting mental health care. Growing entrepreneurship. Stabilizing communities. Preventing crime instead of manufacturing it.

But nope.

We're pouring money into militarized enforcement of non-violent legal technicalities : and acting shocked when innocent people get killed in the process.

That's not law and order. That's policy malpractice.

We Are a Nation of Immigrants : And We're Acting Like Hypocrites

Let's not kid ourselves about the moral context here.

The United States is a nation of immigrants. Not metaphorically. Literally. We are built on waves of newcomers. We are built on stolen land. We are built on displacement of Indigenous people. We are built on the labor of enslaved people. We are built on migration.

And now we've decided that this generation of immigrants is the problem? That the people cleaning our hotels, cooking our food, building our houses, caring for our elderly, harvesting our crops, and paying into our economy are an existential threat?

It's not just hypocritical. It's ahistorical. And it's deadly.

This Is What a Zero-Grace System Looks Like

Alex Pretti didn't die because the world is random.

He died because we've built a zero-grace system. Zero tolerance. Zero de-escalation. Zero patience. Zero margin for error. Zero accountability when things go wrong.

We put civilians and armed agents into volatile situations and pretend perfect behavior is a reasonable expectation for both. It's not.

If your system requires flawless execution by scared human beings to avoid killing someone, your system is broken.

This Is Bigger Than One Officer : But It Starts With Charges

Here's the uncomfortable truth that both political parties want to dodge.

This is not just about one officer. It's about one system.

But systems don't change without accountability. If an officer broke the law, he must be charged. If supervisors authorized reckless operations, they must be disciplined. If agency policies incentivize escalation, they must be rewritten. If federal leadership spun the truth, they must be exposed.

Justice isn't doing more of what got us here. Justice is changing the thing that made this inevitable.

The Only Question That Matters Now

Alex Pretti should be alive. He isn't.

So now there's only one moral question left: Are we going to tell the truth about what happened : or are we going to protect institutions at the cost of human life?

If the answer is "nothing changes," then we have chosen state violence over justice.

And if that's the choice we make, there will be another Alex. Another family. Another city. Another funeral. Another press conference. Another blog post just like this one.

And we'll all pretend to be shocked again.

Second chances are supposed to be the American promise. The idea that no matter what happened yesterday, you can build something different tomorrow. But second chances require systems that allow for them. Systems that value human life over bureaucratic self-protection. Systems that hold power accountable instead of shielding it.

Alex Pretti believed in that. He spent his career giving veterans second chances at life.

He deserved one too.