Two dead citizens, federal lies: Congress must act before ICE murders again

When the government kills with impunity, silence is complicity

Seventeen days. Seventeen days after Minneapolis and the world watched U.S. citizen, poet and mother Renée Nicole Good be killed in cold blood by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, a second American, intensive care nurse and dog lover Alex Jeffrey Pretti, lay dead in the street, executed by another ICE officer from the very government sworn to protect us.

Pretti wasn’t a gang member. He wasn’t a violent extremist. He wasn’t even an undocumented immigrant on their target list. The 37-year-old was a veteran caregiver at the Minneapolis VA hospital — a man who spent his life saving lives, not threatening them. But this administration, in its frantic scramble to justify bloodshed, has labeled him a “terrorist” and a credible threat, just like they did with Good.

And they’re asking us to believe them instead of our own eyes.

Because the videos that everybody has seen tell a different story. Multiple camera angles show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, before federal agents pepper-spray him, tackle him, and ultimately fire the shots that killed him. Ten shots or more. He was on his knees. His phone still in his hand. And he was armed, with a licensed gun he was allowed to carry, but it was holstered. Pretti had simply come to the aid of a woman that ICE agents were shoving. His last act was to protect someone.

His family’s statement cuts through the gaslighting with brutal clarity:

“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.

“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.”

And still, the White House doubles down. Still, the Department of Homeland Security claims self-defense where there is none. Still, the president blames “Democrat chaos” for two American deaths at the hands of his own agents, even as local and state officials are locked out of evidence and investigations.

This isn’t incompetence. It isn’t a mistake. It’s a political operation — a surge of federal force explicitly deployed into a major U.S. city in a blue state that Donald Trump has lost three times. Because if anyone thought this was about illegal immigration, think again. Texas has between 1.6 and 2 million undocumented immigrants. Florida has another 1.6 million. Minnesota? An estimated 133,000 illegal immigrants across the entire state.

So this “major enforcement operation” is really about punishing Minnesotans who didn’t vote for him and Gov. Tim Walz, who was on the ticket as VP with Kamala Harris in 2024.

And when the predictable consequence is the killing of citizens, the reflex is not accountability but denial.

This is the Trump administration’s new normal: If your loved one is shot by ICE, call it self-defense. If videos contradict the official line, insist the videos are misinterpreted. If the public is outraged, blame the outrage on “paid agitators.”

And when communities rise up — demanding ICE leave, calling for justice, mourning at makeshift memorials — the response from power isn’t meaningful reform. It’s spin and stonewalling.

And it’s the eroding what little trust we had left in government narratives. It’s a federal government that tells us not to believe what we watched with our own eyes. That insists video evidence is wrong and that its own version — even when contradicted — should be accepted without question.

That’s not patriotism. That’s gaslighting on a national scale.

Seventeen days. That’s the time between the killing of Renée Good and the killing of Alex Pettri. Seventeen days between two American citizens dying at the hands of federal agents. And in both cases, the response from Washington has been the same: deny, deflect, and dare the public not to believe its own eyes.

They call it law enforcement, but everyone sees what it really is: a murderous cover-up.

Is this the beginning of the end of this lying, treacherous, unethical, criminal administration? Many people said LA was the start of the civil war to come. Then it was Chicago. Now Minnesota, where military troops and National Guard have been put on alert amid widespread demonstrations against ICE Gestapo tactics and fascism (read: our current government). Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would enable troops to conduct searches, seizures, and arrests, potentially bypassing local law enforcement and state authority (like they’re not doing that already). The Black Panthers are increasingly calling for folks to arm themselves.

But the real threat to our republic isn’t whether Americans take up arms against one another — although that it not a wild notion anymore — it’s whether citizens can ever believe their government again. Because when the powerful can kill without accountability and lie without consequence, the social contract that binds us breaks down far faster than any riot in the streets.

And we — the watchers, the recorders, the ones with smartphones and memories — we know the truth.

We saw the videos. We saw the truth. And we are not fooled.

So what happens now?

This moment demands more than perfunctory press releases and generic expressions of concern. The American people — Black, Brown, immigrant, working, professional — have seen two citizens killed by agents of their own government in less than three weeks. They have seen official statements that diverge from recorded evidence. They have seen federal agency spokespeople insist we not believe what we all saw on video.

In the coming days, Congress must make clear that this pattern of impunity and narrative control will not stand. Lawmakers should demand independent, unfiltered investigations with subpoena power; they should insist that local and state authorities be granted access to all evidence, unredacted and without delay. They should hold hearings not just on the specifics of these killings, but on the policies that allowed unaccountable use of force to escalate in the first place.

More than that, Congress should attach real reforms to any funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies — reforms that tighten oversight, clarify rules of engagement, and ensure that federal officers cannot hide behind ambiguity or qualified immunity when they take a life. If meaningful accountability is not part of the bargain, then funding becomes complicity.

And here at home, our representatives — Democrats and Republicans alike — should voice clearly what too many in Washington have so far declined to say: that no administration, regardless of party, is above scrutiny, and that lawmakers swore an oath to protect citizens, not defend agencies from accountability.

Two days later, we have no statement from any of our local legislators — no Congress member or local elected leader — about the shooting or the administration’s lies. Can anybody imagine Carlos Gimenez or Maria Elvira Salazar or Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia staying quiet if a MAGA protestor with a licensed, registered gun in his holster was shot by a federal agent four years ago? But they’re too busy talking about local businesses who deal with Cuba and the UM championship game.

Salazar has used it to promote her Dignity Act, which is more about indentured servitude than it is about any dignity.

Not even Miami-Dade Commissioner Natalie Milian Orbis, who thinks she is Kevin Cabrera and issues statements on all the national news, said a word one way or another.

Didn’t the Republicans go out of their way to defend Kyle Rittenhouse, who actually showed up at a protest to “protect ,businesses” and shot three people, two of them fatally? So now it’s wrong to be armed at a protest? Just trying to keep up, guys.

The country should not have to wait for the next tragedy — or a change in administration — to see justice for the last. The public has seen enough to know when a government answers its own questions instead of answering to the people. Now it is up to Congress to act — not with timid statements, but with legislation and oversight worthy of its constitutional duty.

This kind of independent, government watchdog reporting is crucial to transparency and democracy. And more so every day. Help shine a light on the darker corners of our community with a contribution to Political Cortadito. Click here. Ladra thanks you for your support.

ICE, immigration

Two dead citizens, federal lies: Congress must act before ICE murders again added by Ladra on January 26, 2026
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