Our city under siege

Upon hearing the news on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, of a federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent shooting yet another person on a Minneapolis street, hundreds of residents immediately went outside in subzero temperatures to 26th and Nicollet to express their outrage at the increasing violence being perpetuated by federal agents in the Twin Cities.
Several blocks were cordoned off by police tape. At 27th St., the crowd – loud, angry but nonviolent – was met by fully armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents, hurling flash bangs and chemicals toward them, making the street thick with smoke and driving people, coughing and choking, backward. It looked, sounded, smelled, tasted and felt like a war zone.
As law enforcement left the area around 12:30 p.m. and the crowd kept growing, residents barricaded the streets, drumming on dumpsters and garbage bins and raising flags in protest. The man killed was identified as 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital in East Nokomis.
This happened 17 days after federal agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a wife and mother of three, also a U.S. citizen near Portland Ave. and 35th. And it was just one day after 50,000 plus community activists, union members and faith leaders marched without incident in downtown Minneapolis as 700 plus businesses participated in an economic strike for “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom.”
Fury doesn’t even begin to describe what residents are feeling here. Our city is under siege by our own federal government.

When the law is lawless
Actions by ICE have been under heavy scrutiny since December 2025 when the DHS says it sent in more than 2,000 ICE and CBP agents – more than twice the number of local police officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul combined – to the Twin Cities for its “Operation Metro Surge.”
We’ve witnessed people being yanked out of their vehicles, an elderly gentleman escorted outside wearing only a bathrobe in below freezing temperatures, and a five-year-old child wearing a bunny hat and backpack being escorted away from his house in Columbia Heights. We’ve seen tear gas and pepper spray being casually deployed at very close range against journalists, students and observers. ICE has even detained Native people.
It’s a familiar pattern for the people of Minneapolis: Murder and violence at the hands of the state followed by official statements that are completely at odds with what eyewitnesses saw. As with the 2020 murder of George Floyd by former officer Derek Chauvin, the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti were caught on film and shared on social media for the world to see. And as in 2020, authorities created spin at whiplash speed to cover up what the world already saw. The first official release by the Minneapolis Police Department was that Floyd died of a “medical incident.” With Good it was that agents were trying to get out of the snow and Good was about to run them over in her car. Good is seen on video immediately before she is shot telling an agent from the driver’s seat of her car, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.” Now, authorities are trying to spin that Pretti was somehow the aggressor after video footage shows him running to the aid of a person ICE had just brutally shoved to the ground. Video footage in all three cases contradict official statements on what transpired.
On Jan. 12, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed a federal lawsuit against the DHS, asking the court to end the unprecedented surge of DHS agents into the state and declare it unconstitutional and unlawful.
“The unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents is hurting Minnesota,” said Ellison in a press statement. “People are being racially profiled, harassed, terrorized, and assaulted. Schools have gone into lockdown. Businesses have been forced to close. Minnesota police are spending countless hours dealing with the chaos ICE is causing. This federal invasion of the Twin Cities has to stop.”
Then on Jan. 20, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued subpoenas to the Minnesota governor, the attorney general, the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and county officials for allegedly obstructing federal operations here.
According to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, more than 50% of the people arrested by ICE do not have a criminal record. The consistent lack of judicial warrants means agents are indiscriminately going after people, based on the color of their skin.
“Right now, if you do not have white skin, you are in danger of being approached by ICE or pulled over or boxed in and having ICE demand to see your proof of citizenship. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not,” Moriarty told CNN on Jan. 20.
According to 2024 census data, nearly 40% of Minneapolis residents are non-White. Which means four out of every 10 neighbors are either under threat of being targeted or may feel like they could be targeted. Journalists, community defenders, legal observers – even an off-duty police officer in Brooklyn Center – have also been targeted, illegally detained or assaulted by ICE.
Just as the DOJ shut out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation from its investigation into Good’s death, the administration is attempting to do the same with Pretti’s. On Jan. 24, Ellison filed a lawsuit against DHS to prevent the destruction of evidence related to the fatal shooting of Pretti. The State of Minnesota with Hennepin County is conducting its own investigation.
The State of Minnesota with Hennepin County is conducting its own investigation. Witnesses are encouraged to submit anything that might be evidence, including video, related to the fatal shootings of both Pretti and Good to:
• citizeninfo@hennepin.us.
On Jan. 24, Gov. Tim Walz issued a statement.
“The federal occupation of Minnesota long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. It is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state. And today, that campaign claimed yet another life,” reads his statement. “As I told the White House in no uncertain terms this morning, the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. The state will handle it. Period.”