“The President and his enablers in and out of Congress are complicit in the brutality – the kidnappings, the using children as bait, the murders …”
On Jan. 24, a Department of Homeland Security agent brutally gunned down Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse who had been exercising his First Amendment right to observe and film federal law enforcement actions in public spaces. Mr. Pretti, who carried only his phone in his hand, had been checking in on a fellow observer who’d been pepper-sprayed when a mob of agents tackled him and repeatedly shot him “point-blank,” as People reported. “In total, 10 shots were fired in less than five seconds, according to a forensic audio analysis of the videos,” ABC News reported. “Pretti was declared dead on the scene.” He was just 37.
Helping people was in his DNA, family, friends, and colleagues said.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends, and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital,” his family said. “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.” Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, an infectious disease doctor at Mr. Pretti’s hospital, called him “energetic” and “kind,” People continued. “‘It’s just been gutting,’ he continued of Pretti’s death, adding that he and other colleagues at the hospital ‘want people to know that [Pretti] was a good person. He was such a nice guy.’”
“Freedom is not free. We have to work at it. Nurture it. Protect it. Even sacrifice for it.”
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) 2026-01-25T02:56:51.318Z
His patients agreed. 71-year-old Air Force veteran Sonny Fouts said Mr. Pretti was his ICU nurse when he underwent a descending aorta aneurysm repair procedure just weeks ago.
“I walked in, and Sonny’s just hooked up to so many machines and needles and tubes, and Alex was his nurse and he just lightened the situation,” his partner Kimberly told People. “There are nurses who come in and don’t really say anything, and Alex was not like that. I appreciated that I immediately felt comfortable with him. And I felt that Sonny was in good hands.”
Mr. Fouts has been deeply affected by his murder, the report said. “The veteran tells PEOPLE he’s had a headache and a stomach ache, as well as trouble sleeping, since he learned what happened to Pretti. ‘I don’t like looking at the TV about it. I don’t want to read any newspaper stories,’ he says. ‘I don’t use the word ‘hero,’ but I guess I could say that.’”
The gutting truth is that we are living through the national moment we have long feared. This mass deportation agenda was never just about the threats that face our cherished immigrant neighbors, who have been singled out for no reason other than for who they are and the fact that many remain undocumented due to federal inaction. The administration’s anti-immigrant obsessions were always the tip of the spear for a broader assault on the personal freedoms – and now the very lives – of each and every one of us who call this country our home.
Remembering those who died due to DHS actions and in ICE custody.We stand with communities across the country in grief.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-01-27T22:50:08.337Z
This assault on American communities already had a body count even before the horrific killings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7. An investigation from NBC News reveals that 11 other individuals have been shot by DHS officers during their official operations since September alone. Another American citizen, L.A. resident Keith Porter, was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve. “The shootings ‘are not one-offs,’ said Jim Bueermann, the former police chief in Redlands, California, who now runs the Future Policing Institute, a research group,” NBC News reported. “This is clearly developing into a pattern and practice of how they deal with people in the enforcement of immigration laws, and to me that’s the most alarming thing we’re seeing.”
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The carnage now in our streets did start with the targeting of our immigrant neighbors, which the president pledged during his 2024 campaign would be subjected to “the largest domestic deportation operation” in our nation’s history. In the year since his inauguration, these community members have also been subjected to the deadliest in-custody rate in two decades. Last year, at least 32 immigrants died while in ICE custody, the highest number in more than 20 years. This is the end result of an administration that has purposefully blocked federal lawmakers from their oversight authority, packed the immigration detention system to capacity, subjected detained immigrants to “severe medical neglect,” denied detained immigrants legal counsel, and made the dehumanization and abuse of these neighbors a matter of federal policy.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2026-01-27T22:50:08.338Z
It’s a pattern that, frighteningly, shows no sign of slowing down unless Congress steps in to do its job. Reuters reported Jan. 13 that four immigrants died in-custody during the first ten days of 2026. One of these deaths has since been ruled a homicide according to the deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, USA Today reports. ICE officials had claimed that Geraldo Lunas Campos, who had been held at the abusive Camp East Montana in Texas, had “attempted suicide and security staff tried to save him. But in the autopsy report released by the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner, his cause of death was ‘asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.’”
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Nor has this campaign targeting immigrants and American citizens alike spared some of the most vulnerable among us. In recent days, people of conscience have been horrified at the images of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos surrounded by masked, armed federal agents, who used him as human bait in order to seize his father even though they were following all the rules asked of them as asylum-seekers. “The family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, told The Guardian that Liam and his father were not U.S. citizens but had been seeking asylum in the U.S. and had an active case,” People reported. “He also noted that they arrived in the U.S. through an official point of entry.”
Not only do this child and his father remain detained, there have been many other children traumatized by the state. In Minneapolis, two-year-old Chloe Renata Tipan Villacis was also kidnapped alongside her dad last week, NBC News reports. “A suspicious vehicle followed her father’s vehicle home, broke his window and kidnapped them,” said Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez. “No judicial warrant was provided.” One analysis “estimated that at least 3,800 kids, including 20 infants, have been detained” since the start of the administration, Mother Jones reports. Earlier this month, three Minneapolis children were hospitalized after federal agents launched tear gas into the family’s van, Common Dreams reported. Mom Destiny Jackson “said she performed CPR on the infant after the baby stopped breathing and lost consciousness.”
While we’ve seen the administration focus on a number of specific states that it perceives to be political enemies, it’s not hyperbole or exaggeration to say that all of us are at risk. “ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret,” the outlet reported. “The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.” This violence risks seeping into all our homes, after a whistleblower revealed that ICE leadership shared a secretive memo purporting to give mass deportation agents authority to invade our houses without a judicial warrant, the AP reported.
“The memo is addressed to all ICE personnel,” the report said. “But it has been shown only to ‘select DHS officials’ who then shared it with some employees who were told to read it and return it, Whistleblower Aid wrote in the disclosure.”
“One of the two whistleblowers was allowed to view the memo only in the presence of a supervisor and then had to give it back. That person was not allowed to take notes. A whistleblower was able to access the document and lawfully disclose it to Congress,” Whistleblower Aid said.
Just this week, reports revealed that the administration essentially retired Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino from his role as “commander at large” for CBP, and said that he was leaving Minneapolis and returning to the California region he once terrorized. But the fact is that nothing will change until DHS is held accountable. We must also remember that the buck stops at the top.
“The President and his enablers in and out of Congress are complicit in the brutality– the kidnappings, the using children as bait, the murders – including the ones in Minneapolis – and the full-scale assault on communities across our nation,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “And their goal of unleashing this havoc on the American people was made nakedly clear by AG Bondi’s demand for voter rolls in exchange to end the ICE occupation in MN. Trump and his enablers are willing to do whatever it takes to remain in power.”
