Over the past month, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. On Saturday, January 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Pretti was the third person shot and killed by federal agents in the area in January.
The Department of Homeland Security originally said an officer fired “defensive shots” after Pretti approached officers with a gun, but video of the incident appears to contradict this statement. DHS said this week that two officers involved were placed on leave. In a press conference ThursdayBorder Czar Tom Homan said the administration was working to make the operation “safer, more efficient, within the rules.” He said agents would focus on “targeted and strategic enforcement operations” with a “priority placed on threats to public safety.”
Our photojournalists Cengiz Yar and Peter DiCampo were on the ground in Minneapolis, covering what they saw in the days before and after Pretti’s death. Read their stories below.
Cengiz Yar
I arrived in Minneapolis last week to report on the crackdown and the reaction from local residents.
I had packed my medical kit, a full respirator, a helmet and a few tourniquets, essential for my reporting bag when traveling to dangerous and potentially violent areas. I also brought layers and layers of warm clothing, as temperatures were expected to drop to -20°C in the next few days. I knew the ICE raids and community response had been intense throughout the region, but I wasn’t entirely prepared for what I would end up seeing unfold on the streets.
During my few days in Minnesota, I witnessed countless scenes that reminded me of moments I’ve seen on previous trips covering conflicts around the world. I saw heavily armored federal units moving through quiet neighborhoods. In a grocery store parking lot, angry residents shouted at the officers, demanding they leave town. Masked, armed government agents pointed their weapons at me and some protesters during a mid-afternoon confrontation. Curious guests in a hotel elevator wondered why I was carrying a medical pack and gas mask. The residents of the neighborhood thanked me for being there to see the situation. A drunk man in a hotel bar insulted me, saying the media was at fault. The wars we fought as a nation abroad have come home.
On my first day of reporting, I came across an incident that had been happening for over an hour. Late in the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 22, three construction workers clung to a roof, leaning against the leaning plywood of an unfinished two-story home in far south Minneapolis. Federal agents crowded the house and in cars on the street, raiding the construction site. The officers called for the workers to come down. They refused. They remained on the roof, exposed to the elements in a negative temperature of 4 degrees.
I stood outside the house, looking at the men on the roof, wondering how they could survive with only high visibility vests and work clothes. Onlookers begged officers to let them bring blankets to the men. They were told to stay out of the building.
Other construction workers crowded the snowy construction site while their colleagues clung on above. Some insulted the officers. A worker told the men to get off before they froze to death. “You can at least go to a warm cell,” he shouted. A young white worker jabbed his middle finger at the officers idling in their car. “Fuck you,” he shouted as he stomped on the site. A half-dozen onlookers had also gathered, shouting encouragement to the men above and asking the officers for compassion.
The three men remained on the roof while the young white construction worker argued angrily with the officers for nearly an hour.
Finally, when it was 5 p.m., the officers left.
Onlookers rushed into the building and brought the men down and wrapped them in blankets. “Everything is fine now,” they reassured the men. “You did very well.”
On Friday, I arrived in south Minneapolis as protesters gathered, shouting, filming and whistling at armored officers in a van. After a few minutes, the officers threw tear gas at the small crowd of spectators and fled. The gas drifted through the snowy streets, past neat two-story houses and short, leafless trees. My throat burning, I crouched to the ground, spitting the irritating substances behind a snow bank.
I could not have known that less than a day later, in a similar situation, Customs and Border Protection agents would kill a man by shooting him multiple times in the back as they pinned him to the ground. Pretti died while filming officers and trying to help a woman while being pepper-sprayed. In the chaos that followed the shooting, I saw officers throw tear gas at a few hundred angry protesters who had gathered at the scene of the shooting. Heavily armored law enforcement confronted a crowd of unarmed protesters holding signs and shouting justice and retaliation.
Peter DiCampo
It was 9:07 Saturday morning when I learned someone had been shot outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue. It took me hours to hear Alex Pretti’s name and watch the gruesome videos of CBP agents shooting him to death. But knowing that Minneapolis was on edge after the death of Renee Good, also killed by federal agents, I grabbed my camera and the warmest clothes I could find. I rushed out of my house. At 9:29 a.m. I was in my car messaging a group of fellow photographers “omw”.
Yellow police tape and federal agents lined the scene of the shooting, keeping everyone about a block away in all directions. A small crowd gathered. The first person I recognized wasn’t another journalist, it was my neighbor. ” Rock ! » she cried and told me that she wasn’t sure what was happening, but that she had also heard about the shooting and wanted to go. She sobbed in my arms for a minute, then we separated.
Other agents gathered around. Many wore gas masks. Other residents and others ready to protest another killing arrived. A young man stood at the edge of the yellow ribbon and shouted: an older woman hugged him to try to calm him down. The anger of the crowd was palpable. “ICE agents: get out of Minneapolis,” they shouted.
I don’t have the words to express how it feels to see all this unfold in Minneapolis, a city I grew to know and love after moving here a few years ago. The journalists who have flocked here in recent weeks are people I have encountered on assignments in hotspots around the world. Now they were in my hometown.
As the crowd grew, officers fired tear gas to hold them back. The crowds then dispersed briefly, but some officers seized and arrested people anyway. The crowds quickly reformed and the cycle of tear gas, arrests and roundups continued.
After a burst of tear gas, I stumbled, doubled over and coughed. “Come in!” I heard someone screaming. I looked up and saw a woman opening the door to a building. She wasn’t shouting at me but at two photographers I know. I stumbled toward them, and all three saw me, and all invited me, “Come in!”
I was grateful to be safe from the tear gas and I was grateful to be warm. The high temperature that day was well below freezing; At one point I looked down and realized that the frozen condensation had frozen the dials and buttons on my camera.
The other two photographers and I headed up to the roof and spent over an hour photographing from above. We overlooked the scene of the shooting and could see the FBI examining it and the line of protesters and agents going back and forth in three different directions.
We saw the federal presence finish at the filming location and pack up. They slowly backed away, firing tear gas at protesters who ran at them as they moved away.
We went back down to the street. Protesters gathered on the next block and a similar scene played out there, this time with city and state police. “Why don’t you protect us? » one person shouted at them. Another protester tried to calm the crowd, but people had had enough: “To hell with your pacifism,” I heard someone shout.
Tear gas was fired, people dispersed and the police slowly backed away. Eventually, without federal agents and police, the mood shifted from chaos to something darker.
As I took a moment to breathe, I realized that the final confrontation had taken place right in front of Cheapo Records, where I had gone to buy records on my birthday a few years ago. And the events of the entire day — the shootings, the protests, the tear gas — all took place on a stretch of Nicollet Avenue called Eat Street, known for being home to many of the city’s best restaurants, with cuisines from around the world that showcase the city’s diversity. I knew then that walking these streets would never feel the same again.
People went to the scene of Alex Pretti’s death. There was still yellow tape around, now tied haphazardly around the trash cans. A small blood stain was visible on the sidewalk.
Quietly, they began to build a memorial.
