Following the fatal shooting earlier this month of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, his colleagues received reassurance that they continued to enjoy “federal immunity” for their actions. “Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony,” the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, had previously stated. “No city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”
Words have consequences. Ms Good, a US citizen and mother of three children, had in fact been attempting to drive away from a protest in Minneapolis, where ICE’s deportation snatch squads have terrorised migrants and those who have attempted to defend their rights. On Saturday, in the same city, the same quasi-paramilitary force was responsible for a second shocking death. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot multiple times in the back after being wrestled to the ground and pepper-sprayed.
Mobile phone footage demonstrates that Mr Pretti, like Ms Good, represented no threat. Contrary to scurrilous claims by senior members of the Trump administration, he was holding a phone, not a gun, before he was overpowered. His killing, which occurred after he attempted to assist a fellow protester who was being manhandled, amounted to a summary street execution by security forces. As anger erupted across Minneapolis, federal officers then reportedly prevented state investigators from accessing the scene of the shooting.
As Trumpism seeks to impose a new authoritarian reality on the United States, Mr Pretti’s brutal death feels like a moment of reckoning. Pledges to shut down the US’s southern border, and to deport undocumented migrants, undoubtedly played a part in winning Donald Trump a second term. But the US president’s determination to wage urban warfare with a force that resembles a secret police – and his indifference to the law as he does so – is generating a widespread backlash that includes at least some of his own supporters. In a recent New York Times poll, almost two-thirds of respondents said they disapproved of ICE tactics.
Amid the growing public outrage, and with treacherous midterm elections due in November, some senior Republicans have begun to sense which way the wind is blowing. Some are now demanding a proper investigation into Mr Pretti’s killing, and the future funding of ICE has been brought into question. Mr Trump, having initially described Mr Pretti as a “gunman”, has since stated that his administration was “reviewing everything” regarding his death.
It would, of course, be foolish to place any faith in these words. Shortly before Mr Pretti was killed, it was widely reported that an FBI agent had resigned after being blocked from investigating the shooting of Ms Good on 7 January. But Republican unease and burgeoning nationwide protests suggest that Saturday’s tragedy could yet function as a cross-party wake-up call if Congress can summon up the moral courage to act.
With impunity, masked agents have acted with lethal and lawless violence in Minneapolis. With the connivance of the White House, their actions have been defended with assertions that most of the country has been able to see are false. In such a dark moment for democracy in the US, a different, decent America must now find ways and means to reassert itself.
