MINNEAPOLIS — On Sunday afternoon, as the sun shone clear and bright through another subzero day here, mourners gathered around a patch of snow on Nicollet Avenue to pay their respects to Alex Pretti, the man fatally shot on that spot the day before by federal immigration agents. Where the previous evening the air had been filled with tear gas, now there were only folk hymns rising on a hundred voices, on their way up to meet the now omnipresent drone of a police helicopter.
People brought flowers and wreaths, lit candles, and draped stethoscopes over a wooden cross as a makeshift memorial to the intensive care unit nurse. Through layers of bundled down and wool they hugged each other. Beneath ski goggles, tears streamed.
Pretti, 37, worked at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital. His killing on Saturday morning by federal homeland security agents has shaken the entire city, still reeling from the death of Renee Good after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot her in her car less than three weeks ago. But it is hitting health care workers here especially hard. Many in the crowd were fellow nurses or former colleagues of Pretti.
Brian Johnston, an epidemiologist who worked as an infectious disease researcher at the Minneapolis VA hospital for more than two decades, met Pretti about 10 years ago when he was a junior scientist down the hall in a neighboring lab. “Anyone who knew him for 10 seconds would know he’s a stand-up guy,” Johnston told STAT during the vigil. “He didn’t have to think about doing the right thing, it was just in his blood.”
They weren’t close friends, but they connected over a shared love of mountain biking, and would often eat lunch together at the VA. Johnston watched him make the move from a research assistant to taking nursing classes and becoming certified to work in the ICU. “He just needed to be closer to the frontlines of helping people,” said Johnston, whose father is a veteran and mother is a nurse. “If you’d ever want someone to take care of your loved ones, it’d be Alex.”
Mourners gather Saturday during a vigil for 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer earlier in the day.Adam Gray/AP
Johnston left the VA a few years ago. He was on his way home from his son’s soccer game on Saturday when he learned that the man who’d been shot by federal immigration agents that morning was his former colleague. He came to the vigil Sunday to lay flowers and honor the Pretti that he knew. “It’s really tough to lose a guy like that, to have him taken away so violently,” he said. “It’s a huge loss for Minneapolis.”
For weeks, as thousands of masked, badge-less federal agents have moved through the city and state in unmarked vehicles as part of Operation Metro Surge, health care workers have been sounding the alarm on the public health crisis it is creating. At a press conference last week, pediatricians, emergency room doctors, and other physicians expressed concerns that ICE’s presence in area hospitals is not only violating their patients’ privacy and potentially endangering them, but also deterring immigrants and other vulnerable members of the community from seeking care.
“I have been a practicing physician for 19 years here in Minnesota and I have never seen this amount of chaos and fear,” said Roli Dwivedi, a family physician and chief clinical officer at the University of Minnesota’s community health care center. She shared stories of a patient missing routine wound care follow-ups only to show up in the ICU days later with a life-threatening infection and a mother separated from her child by immigration agents while trying to fill a prescription for the child’s seizure condition. Several clinics have reported no-shows and cancellation rates as high as 60%, Dwivedi said. “Fear is claiming lives.”
Throughout the weekend, physicians and nurses who work in ICUs across the metro have been sending flowers, cards, and donations for meals to Pretti’s colleagues in the VA hospital’s ICU. A spokesperson for the VA hospital told STAT that there were no immediate plans for a public memorial there. On Sunday night, Doug Collins, the U.S. secretary of Veterans Affairs sent condolences to the Pretti family on X, before blaming his death on “state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with the federal government to enforce the law and deport dangerous illegal criminals.”
Within hours of the shooting, federal officials with the Department of Homeland Security justified it as an act of self-defense amid an armed struggle, and asserted, with no evidence, that Pretti had committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” A New York Times analysis of several videos taken by bystanders show that Pretti — who was a lawful gun owner with a concealed carry permit and no criminal record, according to local law enforcement officials — was holding a phone, not a gun, and recording federal officers moments before he was wrestled to the ground, disarmed, and then shot multiple times.
Protesters march through the streets of downtown Minneapolis on Sunday.ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images
Pretti’s family denounced the Trump administration’s response to the shooting as “sickening lies.” In a statement reported by the Associated Press Saturday night, Pretti’s parents, Susan and Michael, described Alex as a “kindhearted soul” who wanted to make a difference in this world. “Please get the truth out about our son,” they said. “He was a good man.”
At the vigil on Sunday, mourners made vows to carry on Pretti’s work. Around the circle, dozens of nurses repeated the words of their pledge to service. “I am a nurse,” they called out. “I will not permit consideration of religion, nationality, race, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.”
“I am a nurse. I will maintain the utmost respect for human life.”
“I am a nurse. I make these promises solemnly, freely, and upon my honor.”
“And I will do it again, every day.”
“Every day.”
“Every day.”
“Amen.”
