A week before federal agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, ICE officers tackled the 37-year-old ICU nurse to the ground and broke his rib during another confrontation, according to the New York Post.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” a friend told CNN.
WHAT’S GOING ON: Pretti told a friend he had pulled over his car after seeing ICE agents chasing what he described as a family on foot. He started shouting and blowing a whistle—at which point five agents tackled him. One agent allegedly leaned on his back, leaving him with a broken rib. They released him at the scene.
A week later, on Saturday, Border Patrol officers shot and killed Pretti during a confrontation in Minneapolis. Video shows him being wrestled to the ground by agents before one removes a gun from his waistband and another fatally shoots him.
THE DETAILS: Federal immigration officers had been documenting information about Pretti and other anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis for weeks. A memo sent this month to agents in the city asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.”
Pretti’s name was known to federal agents, though it’s unclear whether his information had been shared via that intake form—or whether he recognized, or was recognized by, the agents who killed him on Saturday.
OF COURSE: The Department of Homeland Security denies having a database of alleged domestic terrorists. “We do, of course, monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel is now investigating encrypted Signal chats used by activists to share information about ICE activities. Such groups “create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way,” Patel claimed on a conservative podcast Monday.
WHY IT MATTERS: The feds were tracking Pretti. They’d already violently confronted him once, leaving him injured. A week later, he was dead. And now the FBI director is framing community networks that monitor immigration enforcement as dangerous traps for law enforcement—while an ICU nurse lies in a morgue after being shot by the very agents who had his information on file.