With heavy snow predicted this past weekend, I attempted to avoid the weather entirely by moving up a planned visit to Racine, Wisconsin, by one week to watch my good friend Rich perform in the community theater production of “Ripcord.” (He was great by the way).
I naively thought I could escape some of the craziness happening both at home with the weather and nationally with all the protests against the extreme actions being taken by immigration and customs enforcement.
But while I was driving to Racine, border patrol agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA intensive care nurse with no criminal record. Then when I was at the theater on Sunday afternoon, I overheard a conversation of a woman sitting behind me. She said one of her children worked with Pretti at the VA and also was a neighbor of Renée Good, another U.S. citizen shot to death by ICE on Jan. 7.
I haven’t stopped thinking about what’s happening in our country since. I typically try to limit my political editorials to one per month, but if I don’t write about this today, I’m going to boil over like pasta water left on a scorching hot stove for too long.
I vehemently disagreed with what happened to Good, who was shot three times by an ICE officer while attempting to drive away from them. It blew my mind that instead of allowing Minnesota state officials to investigate the shooting, the federal government chose not to investigate the shooting and Good was immediately labeled a “domestic terrorist” by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem and Vice President JD Vance.
The killing of Pretti was even worse. He had been observing agents at a protest and he stepped forward to get in between an agent and a woman the agent had just pushed to the ground. For his efforts, he was pepper sprayed in the face, struck repeatedly in the head and tackled to the ground by seven agents. Pretti had a gun in a holster (legally with a concealed carry permit) and an agent took the gun from him. Moments later, the now-disarmed Pretti was shot in the back by an agent and then shot at least nine more times.
It wasn’t just a shooting, it was murder, plain and simple. Even extreme voices in the right-wing media couldn’t defend Pretti’s killing. The only way to even attempt to justify it was to lie — and that’s exactly what the federal government did.
Noem claimed Pretti “attacked” officers, as did FBI Director Kash Patel and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, but video footage from every angle refutes their claims entirely. Noem claimed Pretti “brandished” his gun, but he never touched it at any point in the interaction. Perhaps most disgusting of all, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to Pretti as “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents,” a claim Vance then reposted on social media.
In a sane world, every single one of those people would be fired for their dangerous lies, but they’re all still going about their business leading our country. Even the agents who shot Pretti were back working on Sunday as if nothing had happened— not even placed on leave — they had just been reassigned out of Minneapolis. It was like the Catholic diocese moving a troubled priest to a different parish instead of firing them and reporting their child abuse in the 20th century.
About two weeks ago, just after the death of Good, The Daily Chief-Union newspaper received more complaints than at any time in my eight-plus-year history there when a political cartoon that was extremely critical of ICE was published. People emailed, called and came in person to let us know how angry they were, that it disrespected local law enforcement.
But just in the two weeks since that cartoon was published, a whistleblower memo was revealed stating the Trump administration had told ICE it could completely disregard the Fourth Amendment and break down doors without a judicial search warrant when performing operations, a massive violation of basic human rights.
And then we had the death of Pretti on Saturday. In trying to defend the actions of the government, several officials have said Pretti deserved what he got because he brought a gun to a protest. It reminded me of back in June 2020 when a Black Lives Matter protest was organized in front of the Wyandot County Courthouse. It was peaceful. They mainly chanted, brought signs and then marched around the block of the courthouse before observing a nine minute moment of silence.
The only potential threat of danger was when group of counter protesters showed up open carrying several semi-automatic weapons. By the logic of people defending Pretti’s killing, it would have been completely justifiable for law enforcement to gun down all of those counter protesters in Upper Sandusky five and a half years ago for showing up armed.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Undocumented immigrants continue to be vilified by those in power who claim they are dangerous, but I did some fact checking. When violence happens, it’s magnified exponentially like with Laken Riley in 2024, but there have been as many U.S. citizens shot and killed by ICE/Border Patrol in the past 20 days as there were murdered by undocumented immigrants in the entire year of 2025.
It’s time for everyday people to start asking themselves and their representatives some serious questions. Why has ICE’s budget ballooned by $175 billion, making it the largest law enforcement agency in America? Why are ICE agents still wearing masks when the FBI, police, deputies, troopers don’t? Why were so many ICE agents sent to Minnesota, a state with less than 7% the undocumented immigrant population of Texas? Why have less than 8% of all people detained by ICE in fiscal year 2026 ever committed a crime on U.S. soil? Why do ICE members require such little training? Why did 32 people die in ICE custody in 2025?
The ends simply don’t justify the means.
That controversial political cartoon is looking more and more prophetic each day we don’t hold our government officials accountable for their actions.
