(AFP) – “This is slaughter in the streets,” Stephen McLaughlin said softly, his words hanging in the bitter cold Minnesota air as he paid his respects to Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse shot dead Saturday by federal border agents. Around him, candles burned in the frigid breeze and flowers froze on their stems. Attendees grieved and hugged.
Pretti, mourners and US media said, died as he had lived — caring for others. He was trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground when federal agents dragged him to his knees and shot him dead. The 37-year-old was being remembered by strangers and friends Monday, who came to honor a life cut violently short. Anger has been simmering in Minneapolis for weeks, sparked after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good on January 7, and those feelings deepened when Pretti became the second US citizen killed during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
What had already seemed intolerable now feels, to many in Minnesota’s largest city, unrecognizable. And the knowledge that larger risks loom. “They’re going to try and do this in other places, but we have a blueprint here now,” protester Kyle Wagner, 37, told AFP. “We’re already actively showing the world how to deal with ICE, and I hope that the rest of the country is prepared to stand their ground, too.”
A few miles south of downtown Minneapolis, the place where Pretti died has been transformed into a makeshift memorial — just blocks from a similar shrine marking the spot where Good was shot. This block has become a place to grieve, to gather and to fret about a head-on collision with the Trump administration that has left residents feeling scared and unsafe. Police officers stood nearby Monday as streams of well-wishers — a few dozen at a time — stopped to leave flowers, photographs, candles and handwritten notes.
“Thank you for your compassion and love towards everyone you cared for,” read one placard. Some paused only briefly, heads bowed in reflection or prayer. Others lingered, fighting back tears in the brutal cold, often for a man they had never met. With the wind chill, it felt like minus 8F — about minus 22C — but people kept coming.
“We are a very tight-knit community, I would say, comparable to every other state, so it’s really beautiful to see everyone get together like this and fight against these injustices,” protester Jasmine Nelson, 21, told AFP.
– ‘This is not America’ –
McLaughlin, a retired 68-year-old, said the killing — and the government’s baseless statements smearing Pretti as a “terrorist” out for blood — had left him shaken. “Corruption is now the rule — you cannot trust the government. It’s frighteningly despicable when you can execute someone in cold blood in the street and then defame them and lie about what happened,” he told AFP. “The world needs to know that. This needs to stop and we need to stop it now.”
The memorial provides a gathering place for a community struggling to reckon with fear, loss and a deepening sense that something fundamental is slipping away. Taylor Stoddart, a 25-year-old business owner, shook her head as she spoke, her voice breaking. “It’s a lie. I mean it’s terrifying, because we all have eyes… We all saw what happened on Saturday, and we saw what happened with Renee Good,” she said. “They are trying to tell us not to believe our own eyes. Are you kidding me? It’s really sad and it’s really, really scary.”
For Tricia Dolley, a nurse like Pretti, the killing struck especially close to home. “This is not an America that we can live in. That is not what any of us wants, it can’t be,” she said. Others spoke more quietly, struggling to articulate what the moment meant. “What’s happening is an assault on the constitution and the rights of American citizens,” a Minneapolis resident who asked to be identified only by her first name, Jessica, told AFP, holding back tears. “The freedoms that are being abridged currently are the freedoms that we fought for and are the reason for the American Revolution in the first place.”
– John Falchetto
© 2024 AFP
