Alex Pretti
Add his name to Renee Good's.
After a long, difficult weekend, following the murder of Alex Pretti on Saturday in Minneapolis, which followed the murder of Renee Good earlier in the month, there is more evidence that when we protest against this administration and stay the course, we prevail. We cannot give up, and Americans don’t look like they intend to. Instead, with a lot of grit, they are staying the course.
There is more I want to write about the death of Alex Pretti once I finish processing everything that happened this weekend. I think we’re all still processing, but also, it’s a moment that demands action, so we have to be able to do both of those things at once. We saw the shameless, untrue, demeaning propaganda DHS spouted about Pretti. There is the failure to acknowledge a tragic mistake, to show empathy for his family, to take steps to take the temperature down—all things this administration must be held accountable for at the highest levels. But today, I want to write about the little bit of light shining through the dark.
Trump is backing down.
His Attorney General Pam Bondi’s offensive offer—give us your voter files, she said to Minnesota, and ICE will leave—was called into question by Judges in Oregon and Minnesota. It was clear the judges had questions, but they weren’t alone.
In the wake of the administration's lies about Pretti, protests erupted across the country. Americans called for an unbiased investigation after reporting emerged that ICE refused to let state and local investigators onto the scene at first, and then abandoned it without securing it, which compromised other agencies’ ability to gather evidence. With protests ongoing across the country, the administration is slowly backing away.
On the Sunday shows, in addition to Democrats, Oklahoma’s Republican Kevin Stitt said Trump needed to answer questions about pulling ICE out of Minnesota and opined “He’s getting bad advice right now.” On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbot said on a local radio show that "They, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be reinstilled," and that they had a plan to do that. Congressional Republicans, including Representative Michael McCaul of Texas and Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, called, in varying degrees, for more investigation. That’s about as much backbone as we’ve seen from Republicans in the past year.
It was clear to Republicans that Americans had no intention of letting this go.
Tonight, it appears that the days of Gregory Bovino strutting around Minneapolis streets in his greatcoat may be over. The Atlantic reported earlier tonight, “Greg Bovino Loses His Job.” They wrote that he had “been removed from his role as Border Patrol ‘commander at large’ and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.”
DHS is denying that the report is true.
But as Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News posted, “Nothing in this carefully worded statement by DHS denies the crux of the reporting that Bovino was demoted to his previous job, lost social media access, will leave Minnesota and may retire soon.”
Of course, removing Bovino alone is not the answer, but it’s a start. And we the people did that. We cannot let up, we have to keep going. As I wrote to you last week on Martin Luther King Day, peaceful protest is the answer. “Bull Connor’s ghost is walking the streets of America in the guise of Donald Trump and others around him, Kristi Noem and Thomas Homan, people who reject country and Constitution. People who have no appreciation for our system of government or our rule of law, but who think only of themselves. We don’t talk enough about how not-normal this is. We all know it, it’s become an accepted truth. Let’s honor the legacy of peaceful protest by speaking that truth to power. Because we love our country. And we intend to take it back in this election year.”
This week, Americans did just that: we spoke truth to power.
In the immediate wake of Pretti’s death, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and others, including the President, tried to demean his character and call him a terrorist. But it quickly became apparent that Pretti was holding a phone, not a gun, and was trying to save another protestor, a woman, who was being attacked by an agent. He wasn’t there to massacre law enforcement. He was a VA ICU nurse. He was there to help. As Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted, “It should freak the American people out that Trump, Noem and Bovino lie so enthusiastically. He wasn't ‘brandishing a weapon’. He wasn't attending a ‘riot’ or ‘interfering in a crime scene’. He was an ICU nurse exercising his constitutional rights.”
In the course of victim-blaming, Noem and Bovino accused Pretti of brandishing a firearm. “Brandishing” is a term taken from a federal statute that criminalizes the use of a firearm to commit certain types of crimes. It means to display all or part of the firearm, or otherwise make the presence of the firearm known to another person, in order to intimidate that person, regardless of whether the firearm is directly visible to that person.
I’m sure you all have seen the video. Pretti is surrounded by agents after he attempts to come to the aid of another protestor. He’s forced to the ground and they appear to be dragging him—we don’t know if they had both of his arms immobilized, but that seems likely from what is depicted. Pretti was carrying a firearm he was legally entitled to have, the Second Amendment at work. His shirt came up, revealing it. An agent removed it. None of this is a license to shoot and kill, especially under these circumstances. Pretti was not even capable of “brandishing” at that point. He was incapable of displaying a firearm to intimidate anyone else while outnumbered by agents who were dragging him, and who had turned on him with no reason. So why lie about it from the podium?
That clumsy attempt at a cover-up offended Americans’ sensibilities. It’s essential that we hold onto that nationwide outrage, and let it spill over into the streets, peacefully of course. We cannot give up, we cannot let the deaths of two Americans recede into memory as Trump commits new outrages. Enforcing the law is one thing. But that is not what is happening; we are watching utter lawlessness from the people who are supposed to be protecting us. And it’s the intense, focused pressure that forces this administration to back down and it’s essential for ICE and CBP to be cordoned off from the role they’ve been playing in recent months.
Monday around noon Eastern Time, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell tweeted that “Trump appears to seek an off ramp amid widening public backlash against the immigration operation in Minnesota and this weekend’s killing. The admin could also face further setbacks as soon as today if the courts find that Operation Metro Surge has been broadly illegal.” He attached the following Truth Social post made by Trump, one that beats a hasty retreat from Trump’s recent attacks on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He wrote, almost unimaginably, about working with Governor Walz.
Trump makes it easy for people to want to give up and to believe he’s broken the rule of law. But over the last few days, we’ve demonstrated, again, that the power in a democracy belongs to the people. A gun and a badge are not a license to kill in this country. We are not Iran or Afghanistan or Myanmar. Using your camera to film agents is not a crime. Trying to assist someone who is on the ground is not a crime. And even if they could be construed as crimes, doing those things doesn’t give law enforcement a reason to kill someone. That is the fundamental truth that Americans have to continue to demand this government acknowledge.
What we saw over the weekend, that was the kind of thing police do in authoritarian police states.
Minneapolis’ Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press conference following the Saturday shooting that the city has only had three homicides in Minneapolis this year. Two of them were committed by ICE. Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Chris Madel, dropped out of the race this morning. He called Trump’s surge an “unmitigated disaster.” “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state,” Madel said. “Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.” He, too, spoke truth to power, saying that U.S. citizens, “particularly those of color, live in fear.”
A republic, if you can keep it, Ben Franklin said. We absolutely can. This past year has been long and difficult. But please don’t give up. Call your Republican officials tomorrow and demand that they show the same courage Madel did. Call your Democratic officials and thank them for what they’ve been doing and ask them to do more. Be prepared to protest and to stand up for your neighbors.
Trump is backing down, and it is because of all of us. Keep supporting the citizens of Minneapolis who are leading the way. Democracy is a participatory exercise and this is our time. Thank you for being here with me at Civil Discourse, as we all work through this.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
As I saw Mr. Pretti lean down to help the woman that ICE had thrown to the ground, I heard the late Mr. Rogers' voice in my head "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." Honor his example: be a helper.
Bovino already under the bus … perhaps Noem too … but Miller is still driving … and the destination is still Trump’s.