>🔥 The Phone and the Gun | In #Memory of #AlexPretti 🕊️ <

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#Protestsong
#RebuildDemocracy 🗽
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#RIP 🖤

#ReneeNicoleGood
#AlexJeffreyPretti

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3tmY_Ddm4oE&si=tHyfzVkAH_zhXKlE

Why Local and State Police Rarely Investigate Federal Agents – ProPublica

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Criminal Justice

“You’re Not Going to Investigate a Federal Officer”

It doesn’t happen often, but local law enforcement can arrest and charge federal agents. Legal experts say there’s a moral obligation to at least try to hold federal immigration officers accountable when they violate the Constitution and the law.

by Andy Mannix, Melissa Sanchez and Nicole Foy

February 5, 2026, 6:00 am

Minutes after a federal agent shot and killed a Mexican immigrant in a Chicago suburb last September, a group of police officers stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out the answer to a question of protocol: Who would investigate the shooting?

“Wouldn’t it be state’s, at a minimum?” one Franklin Park officer asked, according to body camera footage.

Chief Mike Witz shook his head. “No, because it’s a federal shooting,” he said. “You’re not going to investigate a federal officer.”

His officers didn’t investigate. In their report, they didn’t even note the names of the two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the scene of Silverio Villegas González’s death. Instead, they deferred to the FBI.

Local law enforcement officials also did not investigate when a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a U.S. citizen in her car in Chicago less than a month later. Or when an ICE agent in Phoenix shot a Honduran man during a traffic stop later that month.

In fact, local police did not open investigations into six of the 12 shootings by on-duty federal agents that have led to the deaths or injuries of citizens and immigrants since September, a ProPublica analysis found. In three other shooting cases, state or local police said they have opened inquiries, which they called a routine practice in those jurisdictions. And in Minnesota, where ICE and Border Patrol shot and killed two U.S. citizens and injured a Venezuelan man last month, state police have tried to conduct independent investigations only to be thwarted by the Trump administration, which has gone so far as to block officers from a scene, even when they had a judicial warrant.

In almost every instance, President Donald Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead for the shooting within hours of the incident, raising questions about whether federal officials can fairly and objectively investigate their own. Legal experts and advocates for immigrants say this apparent lack of accountability demands that local authorities step up and exercise their power to investigate and prosecute federal agents who break state laws — from battery to murder.

“Local police and the state have gotten a free pass,” said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and the co-founder and director of its Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “Residents have every right and should be demanding that, ‘Hey, state authorities, police, local police: Protect us. Arrest people who kill us, who batter us, who point guns at us and threaten and assault us without legal cause to do so.’”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXw9k7JWufI

Body camera footage shows then-Franklin Park Police Chief Mike Witz responding to his officers’ questions about whether they would investigate the shooting of a Mexican immigrant by federal agents. Obtained by ProPublica

It’s usually the opposite scenario: federal authorities coming in to investigate a troubled police department. But local authorities have investigated and charged federal agents in the past. It’s just rare and complicated. The federal supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution bars local interference with federal law enforcement officers when they act reasonably and within the scope of their duties.

But given the aggressive tactics employed by immigration agents under the Trump administration, Futterman and other legal experts said local police and prosecutors are morally obligated to at least try to hold federal law enforcement officers accountable.

“We’re in an environment right now where ICE officers are blatantly and egregiously violating the Constitution and the law,” said Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The federal government has made it very clear that they are not going to do anything to provide any sort of accountability backstop to its officers. Unfortunately, because Congress is not taking any steps to rein ICE officers in, there really is no option other than states protecting their constituents’ rights.” 

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Why Local and State Police Rarely Investigate Federal Agents — ProPublica

House report accuses Trump administration of cover-up in Good, Pretti killings – MS NOW

News

House report accuses Trump administration of cover-up in Good, Pretti killings

Both Minneapolis residents’ shooting deaths were the “direct result of the rapid and intentional escalation of violence” by DHS officers in service of Trump’s mass deportation plans, the report says.

By Clarissa-Jan Lim, Feb. 3, 2026, 2:41 PM EST

House Oversight Committee Democrats released a report on Tuesday blaming the Trump administration’s “extreme” law enforcement for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and accusing the federal government of a “cover-up” by obstructing impartial investigations into their deaths.

The report, released by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the highest-ranking Democrat on the panel, said that the administration’s “extreme policies, violent tactics, and culture of impunity” led to the fatal shooting of the two Minneapolis residents by Department of Homeland Security officers last month.

Editor’s Note: Report embedded below. –DrWeb

“The fatal shootings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti were not isolated incidents,” the report said. “They are the direct result of the rapid and intentional escalation of violence by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in its ongoing efforts to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and to suppress dissent with no regard for Americans’ constitutional rights.”

The report specifically points to efforts to obscure the identities of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents, including wearing masks, which administration officials have said is necessary to protect their safety.

“Let’s be clear: the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti could have been prevented, and they should both still be alive,” Garcia said in a press release announcing the findings of the report. “President Trump, Kristi Noem, and DHS have lied over and over again and are now trying to cover up the truth. The Trump Administration needs to be held accountable.”

Trump’s ICE enforcement ‘backfiring,’ spurring protests and organizing nationwide, February 3, 2026.

The report also calls out Vice President JD Vance and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who “have incorrectly assured agents that they have ‘absolute immunity’ from criminal prosecution.” Vance has since walked back his claim, saying officers would be disciplined for violating policies.

The administration, the report said, is trying to cover up misconduct by “impeding thorough and impartial investigations into the shootings.”

The Justice Department last week announced it is pursuing a civil rights probe into Pretti’s killing on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol officers, after initially leaving it up to DHS to conduct its own investigations, as MS NOW reported.

The DOJ has maintained that it will not do the same for Good’s death. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer on Jan. 7.

The reversal is one of several changes that the Trump administration has made in its hardline approach to immigration enforcement after the fatal shootings of Pretti and Good, which sparked nationwide protests.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also said Monday that all officers will be outfitted with body cameras in Minneapolis, and as funding allows, nationwide.

Recommended

News – DHS reviewing bodycam videos after killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Sydney Carruth

Deadline: Legal Blog – Pretti killing highlights how the Trump administration has lost the legal benefit of the doubt, Jordan Rubin

Noem: DHS agents in Minneapolis to wear body cameras February 3, 2026 / 08:49

Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday dismissed the rollout of body cameras as “damage control” and urged Minnesotans to continue documenting federal officers’ conduct.

“Keep filming. Keep keeping track of this,” he said at a news conference. “Keep accountability.”

Bystander footage of both shootings has been crucial to showing how Good’s and Pretti’s encounters with federal officers ended with their death. Videos of both incidents have also contradicted the Trump administration’s account of events.

Good and Pretti’s families have strongly denounced the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis. Good’s brother, Luke Ganger, told reporters on Tuesday that his family initially “took some consolation thinking that perhaps Renee’s death would bring about change in our country. It has not.”

‘The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation,” he said. “This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents. These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives — including ours — forever.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

By Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: House report accuses Trump administration of cover-up in Good, Pretti killings

#ICE zahlt #CapGemini Kopfgelder

Kopfgeld-modern:

ICE stellt Unternehmen Boni in Aussicht, abhängig von der Erfolgsquote bei der Überprüfung von Migranten. Je mehr Informationen Capgemini der US-Einwanderungsbehörde ICE liefern, desto höher fällt ihre Vergütung aus.
Capgemini, Europas größter Technologie-Dienstleister, hilft ICE mit einer technischen Lösung, Migranten aufzuspüren. https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/capgemini-wie-europas-groesster-tech-dienstleister-der-us-behoerde-ice-hilft/100195830.html

#USA #Trump #CapGemini #Migratenjagd #RenéeNicoleGood, #Minneapolis #AlexJeffreyPretti

#ICE zahlt #CapGemini Kopfgelder

Kopfgeld-modern:

ICE stellt Unternehmen Boni in Aussicht, abhängig von der Erfolgsquote bei der Überprüfung von Migranten. Je mehr Informationen Capgemini der US-Einwanderungsbehörde ICE liefern, desto höher fällt ihre Vergütung aus.
Capgemini, Europas größter Technologie-Dienstleister, hilft ICE mit einer technischen Lösung, Migranten aufzuspüren. https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/capgemini-wie-europas-groesster-tech-dienstleister-der-us-behoerde-ice-hilft/100195830.html

#USA #Trump #CapGemini #Migratenjagd #RenéeNicoleGood, #Minneapolis #AlexJeffreyPretti

ICE killing in Minneapolis marks a dangerous new chapter for America – Las Vegas Sun News

January 31, 2026

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EDITORIAL:

ICE killing in Minneapolis marks a dangerous new chapter for America

Friday, Jan. 30, 2026 | 2 a.m.

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The killing of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street over the weekend should end any remaining illusions about where Donald Trump’s second-term presidency is headed. This was not an isolated tragedy, not a “confusing situation,” not the regrettable outcome of a tense encounter. The killings of Renee Nicole Good and Pretti in Minneapolis are an inflection point — the moment when the authoritarian impulses Trump has long telegraphed crossed fully from rhetoric into bloodshed.

Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse who cared for veterans at the VA, and a concealed-carry license holder. He was standing in the street, exercising his constitutional rights to speak and assemble freely as part of a peaceful protest. He attempted to help a female protester get to her feet after she was thrown to the ground by federal agents.Within seconds, he was shot dead from behind, killed by his own government even though he posed no threat and was defenseless at the time.

Almost immediately, Trump administration officials rushed to the microphones to smear Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin.” But video evidence and even Customs and Border Protection’s own preliminary review reveal the lie being spread by Trump’s minions to manipulate the American people, distort the truth and consolidate power in Trump.

This pattern should be chillingly familiar. During his first campaign, Trump demonstrated that he was willing to violate the law and lie repeatedly to manipulate the public about his business acumen, his wealth and his relationships with everyone from Russian oligarchs to an adult film star.

Now, in his second term, the message is unmistakable: Laws, court orders, constitutional rights and even the lives of the American people, are expendable if they interfere with his pursuit of power and impunity.

Pretti’s killing did not happen in a vacuum. In January alone, at least eight people have died in encounters with federal immigration officials or while in ICE custody. In several of those cases, eyewitness accounts and recordings directly contradict the official narratives issued by the administration. At least two of the dead were U.S. citizens who asked only to exercise their constitutional rights to move, assemble and speak freely; to lawfully carry a firearm; and, if accused of wrongdoing, to receive due process.

Instead, they were met with what can only be described as summary executions by a federal force that increasingly resembles a private army loyal to Trump alone.

Moreover, the Trump administration has shown an alarming comfort with lying about the circumstances surrounding the death of Americans at the hands of ICE.

Consider the facts in Pretti’s case. The Department of Homeland Security initially claimed he “approached officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun,” neglecting to mention that the weapon was holstered and he never reached for it. The government’s own preliminary review concedes there was no brandishing — only a refusal to move while filming agents, followed by an attempt to help a woman up, then being swarmed by federal agents and then gunfire. In fact, it was federal agents who removed Pretti’s gun from its holster prior to shooting the unarmed and incapacitated man multiple times in the back, ending his life.

The same script played out earlier this month with the killing of Good, a Minneapolis mother of three shot in her car by a federal agent. Her last words to the man who killed her as she tried to drive away from the scene: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Hardly the sentiments of a terrorist.

She, too, was instantly labeled a “violent rioter” and “domestic terrorist.” Trump himself claimed she ran over an officer. Video evidence shows that she had the wheels of her car turned away from the federal agent who shot her, undermining the administration’s certainty and raising profound questions about the use of lethal force.

And then there is the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, a Cuban immigrant who died in ICE custody in El Paso, Texas. ICE claimed suicide. A witness described a chokehold. An autopsy found injuries consistent with a chokehold and potentially with homicide. Once again, the official story collapses under scrutiny.

Trump administration officials have suggested that because Pretti carried a holstered weapon and filmed agents, that his killing was “legally justified.” By this standard, law enforcement should have opened fire on the thousands of Jan. 6 attackers who killed and maimed Capitol police, or Kyle Rittenhouse, or the armed militiamen who invaded the Michigan statehouse, or the armed demonstrators intimidating voters in Arizona.

For those who voted for Trump, take note. The danger that was once reserved for immigrants, people of color or LGBTQ Americans is now at your doorstep. This is not Barack Obama or Joe Biden ordering masked federal agents into the streets without training. It is not a Democratic administration asserting that it is “legally justified” for the federal government to shoot anyone who lawfully carries a gun near a protest. It is Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which controls every branch of the federal government.

Nor should we forget that as Trump proclaims support for the protesters in Iran and says the state shouldn’t kill them, his administration is killing protesters in the U.S. because they oppose his policies.

Worse still, as conservative commentator Joe Rogan pointed out last week, it appears that one of Trump’s primary motivations for sending ICE into the streets is simply to distract from an even larger national scandal: the Epstein files.

Despite a federal law mandating the release of the files by Dec. 19, Trump’s Justice Department has released only about 1% of the files thus far. At its current pace, the department won’t release all the files until 2030.

Last week, Rogan implied that ICE’s massive ongoing operations are designed to distract from Trump’s potential involvement in a child-sex trafficking ring. It’s an immigration crackdown weaponized to divert attention from one of the few scandals that could stand in the way of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions.

We don’t know if Rogan is correct or not, because like everyone else, we haven’t seen the files. What we do know is that regardless of the motivation, Trump and his minions are trashing the Constitution and killing American citizens with no cause or legitimate justification.

Authoritarianism does not arrive all at once. It advances in steps, each normalized by fear, propaganda and the vilification of the dead. The killings in Minneapolis mark the moment when the line was crossed, when the erosion of rights turned unmistakably lethal. If Americans do not recognize them as such, the next inflection point may come even closer to home.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: ICE killing in Minneapolis marks a dangerous new chapter for America – Las Vegas Sun News

Minneapolis is a Turning Point – Crooked Media

January 30, 2026

Pod Save America, Minneapolis is a Turning Point

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In This Episode

Outrage over the killing of Alex Pretti spreads to nonpolitical and Trump-friendly spaces, even as Border Czar Tom Homan promises to “draw down” the DHS presence in Minneapolis and the White House caves to Democrats’ demands on debating DHS funding. Could this be a turning point in the Trump presidency? Jon and Dan discuss all the latest, including Anderson Cooper’s extraordinary conversation with Stella Carlson, the woman who filmed the crucial angle of the shooting. Then they turn to the FBI’s deeply troubling raid on the election headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia, and the premiere of “Melania,” a multi-million dollar bribe from Jeff Bezos to the first family disguised as a documentary. Then, Jon sits down with MSNOW’s Joe Scarborough to talk about why Republicans in Congress still put up with Trump, and why he hopes the next Democratic nominee returns to the party’s organizing roots. Plus: a special preview of our new subscriber-only show, Pod Save America: OnlyFriends.

Editor’s Note: The Spotify podcast for this episode is embedded below. –DrWeb

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Minneapolis is a Turning Point | Crooked Media

Literary Hub – Letter From Minnesota: Finding Reverence in the Face of Brutality

Letter From Minnesota: Finding Reverence in the Face of Brutality

E. Bok Lee on the Courage the of Alex Pretti and His Fellow Minnesotans

By Ed Bok Lee, January 29, 2026

So far this year, in Minneapolis, there have been three homicides, two of them by ICE.

Eat Street in the Whittier neighborhood, where Alex Pretti was gunned down Saturday morning, is historically the closest thing to a “Chinatown” in the city, though really, it’s much more diverse. Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Jamaican, Greek, German, Irish, East African, Mediterranean, Malaysian, Tibetan, etc. restaurants, grocers, and other businesses reflect some of the best aspects of Minneapolis, on many levels of community—the rawness of its arts, music, and culture; the diversity and hungry American bustle; the high number of transitional housing units, shelters, churches, non-profit agencies.

As one the most diverse neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Whittier is home to some 25 languages from 30 countries. For a good decade, I lived, worked, and had a writing office all right on Eat Street (Nicollet Avenue).

If one word had to describe the feeling on this first night of the new year’s second killing by ICE in South Minneapolis, it would be this: Reverence.

You could say the future lives in Whittier. Literally, aside from being one of the most racially and economically diverse, it’s a Midwestern neighborhood with one of the highest populations of folks 18 to 34 in the city. On the night after Alex Pretti’s brutal and brutalizing killing, long into night, amid -9 F cold (with a -20 F windchill), many hundreds of folks (coming and going), mostly zillennials, kept vigil late into the night, setting up tables for hot soup and coffee, chanting, holding space for Mr. Pretti’s and one another’s spirits, and keeping shops open. Resale, a women-owned, LGBTQ-friendly curated secondhand clothing boutique, stayed open so the vigil keepers could sit and thaw, or get a free, extra pair of tube socks, or hand warmers, or bottles of water. Meanwhile, next door at Glam Doll Donuts, right across the street from the scene of the killing, mourners warmed up with free coffee and hot chocolate.

For the hour I could lay a flower down and pay my respects at the memorial site on the sidewalk in front of New American Development Center before my toes in my heavy boots went numb, our call and response never ceased:

“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”/“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”

Near the memorial site of hundreds of flower bouquets and candles, a few controlled fires raged, warming fingers, noses, and lips. The mood was somber, glowing, and peaceful. But if one word had to describe the feeling on this first night of the new year’s second killing by ICE in South Minneapolis, it would be this: Reverence. Reverence for Mr. Pretti’s intentions and actions. Reverence for all the others in recent—and distant—memory gunned down by the law, or, in one recent murder of the state’s DFL Speaker of the House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman and her husband, gunned down in their pajamas this past summer by someone impersonating the law.

Amid the call and response on Eat Street last night, many names began to mix in my head.

“Say his name!”/“Alex Pretti!”
“Say her name!”/“Renee Good!”
“Say her name!”/“Melissa Hortman!”
“Say his name!”/“George Floyd!”
“Say his name!”/“Amir Locke!”
“Say his name!”/“Daunte Wright!”
“Say his name!”/“Philando Castile!”
“Say his name!”/“Jamar Clark!”
“Say his name!”/“Fong Lee!”

And the list goes on.

Yes, it’s true. Minnesota, and especially Minneapolis—in recent years, the nation’s epicenter of violence—is deeply traumatized. There are layers and layers of trauma here. From the very beginning with the government’s brutal policies toward Indigenous peoples, to Dred Scott, to a bloody history of labor crackdowns, to vigorous redlining, to uncommonly high Korean adoptee and Southeast Asian, Somali, and other refugee populations leading to anti-Asian and anti-African sentiments, to being a sanctuary city, to some of the highest levels of racial, economic, and educational segregation in the US to this day, there is no shortage of collective traumas to reckon with.

Since Covid, the traumas have outpaced many of our personal capacities to productively process this history and our present society. To this day, you see and feel it in the still-shuttered storefronts in the once lively Uptown area, and well beyond; the still-closed, burnt-down Third Precinct Police Station; the ongoing, ever-shifting human encampments; the many struggling restaurants; the long carlines outside at the food shelves; the curtains drawn in conspicuously ICE-monitored neighborhoods; and, yes, the shuttered day cares and other services, some of which are, or were, as is repeated over and over by the right, run by immigrant and refugee business people currently under investigation for wide-scale fraud by the government.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Literary Hub » Letter From Minnesota: Finding Reverence in the Face of Brutality

>#NotOneMore - A Song for Alex Pretti | The Midnight Republic<

#PoliticalCommunication
#Popculture meets #Policy

#Protestsong
#Minnesota #Minneapolis

#RebuildDemocracy 🗽

#ReneeNicoleGood
#AlexJeffreyPretti

#AccountabilityNow ❗

#Stop the paramilitary #ICE ❗

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vGAHzvVwc_Y&si=3WUVabuje1jg0gLR