Editor’s note: This is a developing story.
A registered nurse was shot and killed Saturday morning in Minneapolis by federal agents, intensifying residents’ demonstrations against the immigration enforcement operation and triggering condemnation from a professional association.
The man has been identified by news outlets and local officials as Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen who worked at a Veterans Administration intensive care unit.
Widely circulating videos taken by bystanders and verified by news outlets show several officers wrestling Pretti, who was pepper sprayed, to the ground. The agents appear to pull a gun from the pile of bodies before at least one agent steps back and fires multiple times at Pretti.
The footage does not appear to show Pretti, who was holding a phone, having visibly drawn a weapon before the altercation.
Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, in a Saturday press conference, said that the man who was killed was not the target of the “targeted operation” agents were conducting. The official said agents were attempting to disarm him when he “violently resisted,” and that “fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots.”
Bovino and other Department of Homeland Security officials did not say that the man drew his weapon, but DHS said in a post on X that his possession of the handgun and two magazines “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Saturday that Pretti is not believed to have a criminal record, and was licensed to own a firearm. Minnesota law permits licensed owners to carry handguns in public without concealment.
The shooting is the latest incident in a weeks-long saga of federal immigration enforcement and protests by residents and others critical of agents’ conduct and the Trump administration’s broader policies on immigration. That includes the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.
Pretti’s death amplified demonstrations on Saturday despite freezing temperatures. The Minnesota National Guard, which was activated by Gov. Tim Walz, has reportedly been assisting local police in preventing further confrontations at the site of the shooting and elsewhere in the city.
The American Nurses Association (ANA), in a statement released Saturday afternoon, said it was “deeply disturbed” by the incident.
“One in four nurses already experience workplace violence. As incidents with federal law enforcement continue to rise across the country, we are deeply concerned for the safety of nurses, both on the job and in the communities they serve.
“Nurses are advocates for the safety and well-being of their communities. They enter this profession to heal, to protect human life, and to show up for people in their most vulnerable moments,” the statement reads.
The ANA also called for transparency and “a full, unencumbered investigation” into the shooting.
Other nursing groups and local healthcare practitioners have previously condemned the federal government’s crackdown in Minnesota. Dozens of doctors and other staff affiliated with the Committee of Interns and Residents, the country’s largest house staff union, held a demonstration outside of Hennepin County Medical Center on Friday telling attendees that patients were avoiding needed care due to their fear of ICE.
“They are in our hospital right now,” Zach Perez, M.D. a first-year family medicine resident at the hospital, reportedly said. “(ICE agents) are interfering with patient care, they are interfering with patients, restraining our patients.”
National Nurses United, a 225,000-member national union of registered nurses, had released statements on Friday demanding the removal of immigration enforcement agents from local communities and the broader abolition of ICE. The group also applauded a general strike conducted by Minnesota residents on Friday.
“ICE has no place in our hospitals and communities, and it has no place in our federal government as an institution, period,” one of the statements read. “Nurses will be on the front lines of leading this fight to abolish ICE and build with our patients, our communities, and all working people toward our vision for a healthy society.”
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