This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Minnesota, where federal immigration agents Saturday fatally shot Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked in the Minneapolis Veterans Health Care System. Pretti’s killing came just over two weeks after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three. And it came a day after a massive protest in Minnesota against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
As in the case of Renee Good, Trump administration officials quickly claimed Alex Pretti posed a threat. Pretti was a licensed gun owner and was armed, but video shows he never took out his gun. White House adviser Stephen Miller called Pretti a “would-be assassin.” Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino claimed Pretti wanted to, quote, “massacre law enforcement,” unquote. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Pretti had, quote, “brandished a weapon.”
But video from the scene and sworn testimony from eyewitnesses told a very different testimony. I want to read the words of one eyewitness. The witness begins by describing how Pretti had been helping to direct traffic in the minutes before he was fatally shot. The eyewitness wrote, quote, “I and the man who was observing and helping direct traffic were standing in the street. There was a phone in the man’s hand recording a video.
“An agent approached and asked us to back up, so I moved slowly back onto the sidewalk.
“The man stayed in the street, filming as the other observers … were being forced backward by another ICE agent threatening them with pepper spray. The man went closer to support them as they got threatened, just with his camera out. I didn’t see him reach for or hold a gun.
“Then the ICE agent shoved one of the other observers to the ground. Then he started pepper spraying all three of them directly in the face and all over. The man with the phone put his hands above his head and the agent sprayed him again and pushed him.
“Then the man tried to help up the woman the ICE agent had shoved to the ground. The ICE agents just kept spraying. More agents came over and grabbed the man who was still trying to help the woman get up. …
“The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn’t see him touch any of them — he wasn’t even turned toward them. It didn’t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.
“I don’t know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him and they just shot him.”
That’s the sworn testimony of an individual who witnessed immigration agents fatally shooting Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis Saturday morning.
Video shows Pretti never reached for his gun and that an agent disarmed him by removing Pretti’s gun from its holster before the first shot was fired. A total of 10 shots were fired. Six of the shots were fired at Pretti’s motionless body.
A doctor who witnessed the shooting described what happening next by saying, quote, “I saw that the victim was lying on his side and was surrounded by several ICE agents. I was confused as to why the victim was on his side, because that is not standard practice when a victim has been shot. Checking for a pulse and administering CPR is standard practice. Instead of doing either of those things, the ICE agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds,” unquote.
After the shooting, the federal government blocked local investigators from reviewing the evidence, just like it did after the fatal shooting of Renee Good. On Saturday night, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring federal officials, quote, “from destroying or altering evidence,” unquote. A federal court hearing is set for today. Several Republican lawmakers have called for joint federal and state investigations. Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said, quote, “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake,” unquote.
Democracy Now!’s John Hamilton was in the streets of Minneapolis this weekend and filed this report.
JOHN HAMILTON: Nine a.m. on Saturday morning, gunshots ring out across a stretch of the Whittier neighborhood of south Minneapolis, known as “Eat Street.”
Video of the homicide began to circulate across social media, prompting shocked and angry neighbors to pour into the streets despite temperatures below zero Fahrenheit. Within hours, protesters from across the Twin Cities region converged near the intersection of Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street, the site of the killing. They were met with extraordinary violence.
PROTESTER 1: They will kill me if you let them take me! Stop taking pictures and save my life!
JOHN HAMILTON: Those arrested by the masked federal agents were shoved into unmarked SUVs, many with out-of-state plates.
PROTESTER 2: They took my sister Donna. She was on the corner exercising her First Amendment right to protest. We were standing on the corner. We got separated by ICE. And I turned around to find her, and she was being thrown on the ground. And there was, I don’t know, four or five agents on top of her. And then they drug her to a car or to something. It might be that van down there. Sorry, I just want to find my sister, Donna. Please! Somebody help me find where I can pick her up.
PROTESTER 3: We were just running away from the gas. That’s all we were doing.
PROTESTER 4: OK. Where is she right now?
PROTESTER 3: She’s being arrested by ICE.
JOHN HAMILTON: Just as they did after ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good on January 7th, federal agents blocked state investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from approaching the scene, even after BCA officers obtained a warrant signed by a judge.
KEVIN: My name is Kevin. I live a block away from here. I mean, I woke up today and heard the news and immediately came outside to start protesting. These people are Nazi fascists, and they need to get out of our neighborhoods. They need to be abolished. This entire agency needs to be abolished. The constitutional observers are being dragged out of their vehicles. They’re still breaking their windows, breaking out of their vehicles, pepper-spraying. I’m seeing people being pepper-sprayed who are just lying down and already tackled by three Border Patrol agents. This latest video, this person, six Border Patrol agents around them, and they still shot them five times in the street. It’s just outright murder. They’re just outright murdering us.
JEREMY: Yeah. Hi. My name is Jeremy. And right now I’m standing on Stevens and 26th here. And I’ve got a ton of ICE agents sitting in the street, and they’re all trying to push us back and get us out of the area. Just this morning, six ICE officers shot and killed one person. I came out here to protest. And all they have done ever since is arrest innocent people for walking into the street.
JOHN HAMILTON: About four hours after they were filmed committing homicide in a video that was already racing across the internet, the masked federal agents left the scene.
PROTESTER 5: Where’s the shame, huh? Where’s the shame?
JOHN HAMILTON: They drove away angry but peaceful protesters with volleys of tear gas, concussion grenades and other so-called less lethal weapons.
PROTESTER 5: Time for you to go! I think it’s time for you to go!
JOHN HAMILTON: ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agents left in a convoy of SUVs, tailed by an armored vehicle.
PROTESTER 5: Get out of our neighborhood! We don’t want you here!
JOHN HAMILTON: Vacating a crime scene without any coordination with the state or local law enforcement.
PROTESTER 6: As they were leaving, they just started throwing tear gas and concussion flashbangs into the crowd. Nobody was doing anything. I was literally shaking hands with people I was talking to as they were leaving.
JOHN HAMILTON: Just minutes after federal agents left the scene, uniformed state police officers fired volleys of tear gas as they left in a convoy that was flanked by a pair of armored vehicles. Reverend Genjo Sam Conway lives three blocks from the scene of the killing. He woke up to the sound of a helicopter overhead and rushed to the scene after learning the news.
REV. GENJO SAM CONWAY: This is somebody else. This is the DNR now and the State Patrol, is what it looks like. We don’t understand, one, why they’re here, and we don’t understand, two, why they’re allowed to be masked, as well. They are also refusing to identify themselves and not providing badge numbers or names. Get ICE out of here and be on our side. You’re supposed to protect us, not them. They don’t live here. Help us. Help us right now. This is an occupation.
PROTESTERS: ICE out now!
JOHN HAMILTON: With the stench of tear gas still in the air, protesters gathered by the hundreds at the intersection of 26th and Nicollet Avenue, where they erected barricades cutting off vehicle traffic and erecting a memorial at the site of the killing.
PROTESTER 7: Say his name!
PROTESTERS: Alex Pretti!
PROTESTER 7: Alex Pretti! He was murdered by ICE, by our government! We should be outraged! All of you should be mad! All of you should be angry! We cannot stand for this!
PROTESTER 8: We are! We are!
PROTESTER 7: Say his name!
PROTESTERS: Alex Pretti!
PROTESTER 7: Alex Pretti!
PROTESTERS: Alex Pretti!
PROTESTER 9: One more time!
PROTESTERS: Alex Pretti!
PROTESTER 9: One more time!
PROTESTERS: Alex Pretti!
JOHN HAMILTON: Across the street from where Alex Pretti was gunned down by federal agents is Glam Doll Donuts, where eyewitnesses watched the killing through the restaurant’s front window. Inside, some of the staff who witnessed the violence are feeding donuts and coffee to protesters who’ve come in from the cold.
MELISSA: My name’s Melissa. I’m a volunteer for being a medic. And I’m here because I saw in my neighborhood that a nurse was murdered on Nicollet, and there was a lot of people here getting pepper-sprayed, and so I wanted to come down and provide services to help our community. We’ve seen everything from people that are unconscious, that have fainted, tear-gassed, bruised, bloody noses, can’t breathe, like asthmatic events, just simple things I haven’t seen besides the worst thing that could happen to a human, being murdered. I wasn’t here at that time, but there were several people that are here now that were present. This is my neighborhood. I have to be out here. Right before, when I was coming here, I called my son to let him know where I was going and that I was volunteering as a medic, because I don’t know, it could have been me. We are all Renee Good. It could have been us. The gentleman, I don’t know his name, that was murdered today, that could have been my son or you. It’s random. He was an observer. I am an observer. I’m an — you know, I have this medic badge. But what does that mean? That doesn’t mean anything. They don’t care.
JOHN HAMILTON: Jaylani Hussein is a Somali American civil rights activist and executive director of the Minnesota chapter of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
JAYLANI HUSSEIN: We are here again at another scene of a murder of, really, a neighbor who decided to be an observer today. You could see the videos that he was at the time standing up for his neighbors, and ICE agents did not like that and appeared to be approaching him, wrestling him to the ground, and then, later on, shooting and killing him.
So, it’s a really tense situation. Minnesotans have come out today. There’s a lot of people on the streets. We really just cannot make sense of what’s happening. We are under assault. We are under attack. We are sieged by the federal government. We have 3,000 masked men in our community. Our law enforcements are overwhelmed. And we’re feeling a sense of overcome by everything that’s happening.
Yet yesterday, on one of the coldest days of the year, nearly negative 10 degrees, you know, 50,000 people came out in protesting. And it’s just a reminder of who we are. And then, just a day after, we had that many people come out who were inspired to stand up for Renee Good, for their neighbors. And then to have one of our neighbors once again murdered, it’s just — it’s just incredible. And it’s testing our state and our leadership and our community. I know we’re resilient, and we will — we will win at the end.
JOHN HAMILTON: Alex Pretti and Renee Good were both 37 years old and both residents of Minneapolis’s Southside.
SEN. OMAR FATEH: My name is Omar Fateh, a state senator representing Southside Minneapolis District 62, also the site in which both Alex and Renee Good have been murdered. Right now we’re inside Glam Doll Donuts off of Nicollet, right by the site in which Alex was murdered at the hands of ICE. This morning, Alex was outside with all of our neighbors, serving as a neighborhood protector, recording ICE when ICE comes into the community. We’ve had neighborhood response groups come together, prepare, organize each other.
And we’ve gotten a lot of misformation and lies spread by the federal government and right wing saying that he was a threat to our ICE agents, he was a threat to the neighbors. And that’s completely false. What we saw on camera was Alex was peacefully observing. He had a camera on his hand. He was tackled, he was pummeled, and he was executed. And we’ve seen that on camera.
Well, we’ve seen our president talk out of both sides of his mouth. At one time he’s saying that he wants to target, quote-unquote, “criminals,” folks that are here illegally. And then he’s saying that, “No, we’ve got to get all the Somalis out. We’ve got to send them back to their country. They’re all criminals.” And so, what we’re seeing right now, and it’s very evident here in Minneapolis, is that not only our immigrant communities are being targeted, but, literally, United States citizens have been murdered.
JOHN HAMILTON: On Sunday morning, state investigators with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were seen canvassing the site where Alex Pretti was killed. They noted the locations of security cameras and asked people to step aside while they inspected the site of the shooting.
BCA INVESTIGATOR 1: Thank you, everyone. We really appreciate it.
BCA INVESTIGATOR 2: Thanks, everyone, for your cooperation.
JOHN HAMILTON: Heidi Randen is a registered nurse who joined other healthcare workers at a vigil honoring Alex Jeffrey Pretti.
HEIDI RANDEN: Alex was an ICU nurse at the VA. That’s one of the toughest jobs in the world. And I’m so grateful to Alex for the care that he provided to his patients. And I am holding his family in my heart right now, and I’m holding his co-workers in my heart.
PROTESTERS: No justice! No peace! No justice! No peace!
HEIDI RANDEN: These people are not helpers. They are not enforcing the law. They are causing chaos, and they are hurting people. And they need to go.
JOHN HAMILTON: For Democracy Now!, I’m John Hamilton in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to John Hamilton. When we come back, we speak to a doctor who hired Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minnesota on Saturday. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Hog of the Forsaken” by the late folk musician Michael Hurley.
