MINNEAPOLIS — The man who was hot multiple times and killed Saturdav by Border Patrol agents was a registered nurse. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, age 37, worked in the intensive care unit at the Veterans Administration hospital in Minneapolis. The shooting was on a south Minneapolis street as border agents were hunting down an immigrant for arrest. Pretti, an American citizen, was not on any Border Patrol wanted list. Pretti’s only police history: Minor parking tickets. When shot, he was participating in a citizen project to track and videotape incursions of Trump border agents who had roamed the Twin Cities for two months and left a disturbing trail of brutal policing excesses to meet a White Houe quota of 1 million immigrant deportations nationwide. Pretti was with a small loosely afflIiaTed group with cellphones recording Border Patrol activities — which is a citizen right. Within an hour of the shooting, the Trump propaganda machine began spinning lies about Pretti to divert blame from the fatal Border Patrol attack on him. At the White House a deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” This was a lie. Miller also called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.” More lies with an outlandish resumption of being inside Pretti’s mind. For this too there was no supporting evidence — not on any video or audio of the event and certainly not so quickly and 1,100 miles away. Miller, at the White House, also claimed that Pretti charged at Border agents with a gun. This too was a lie. Yes, Pretti did had a gun but it was holstered, not brandished. Also: Pretti held a right-to-carry firearm permit, as allowed by Minnesota law. About the same time that Miller was fabricating g his false narrative at the White House , Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, who runs border security, also from Washington, alleged that Pretti approached agents with a gun and wanted to “inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Again: Neither video nor audio evidence supports such allegations. Noem too was fabricating a cover-up to excuse a Border Patrol homicide — the second by her agents in Minneapolis in two weeks Also conspiring in the cover-up was Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino. Too: Vice President JD Vance cast Pretti as an agent of conspiracy — a “direct consequence of Far Left agitators, working with local authorities.” Vance’s account was an insult that Pretti was a puppet and incapable of acting on his own adult volition.
Pretti. In scruubs as an intensive care unit nurse. A graduate of the University of Minnesota. High-schooled in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Pretti profile
Colleagues at the Veterans Administration in Minneapolis remembered him as kind, professionally committed as a nurse, and with an easy sense of humor. One colleague, Dimitri Drekonja: “The default look on his face was a smile.” Another collegue, Ruth Anway: “He wanted to be helpful, to help humanity and have a career that was a force of good in the world,” Prett loved the outdoors and shared adventures with his dog Jou, who died recently. Pretti’s father told reporters that recent Trump police excesses in his Minneapolis neighborhood had affected him: “He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the nation. He felt that doing the protesting was a way to express his care for others.”
Verbatim
Michael and Susan Pretti, his parents: “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.”
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