Over the past month, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. On Saturday, Jan. 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Pretti was the third person shot by federal agents in the area in January.
The Department of Homeland Security initially said an agent fired “defensive shots” after Pretti approached officers with a weapon, but video of the incident appears to contradict that claim. DHS said this week that two officers involved were placed on leave. In a press conference on Thursday, border czar Tom Homan said the administration is working on making the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book.” He said that agents will focus on “targeted, strategic enforcement operations” with a “prioritization on public safety threats.”
Our photojournalists Cengiz Yar and Peter DiCampo were on the ground in Minneapolis, covering what they saw in the days before and after Pretti’s death. Read their accounts below.
Cengiz Yar
I arrived in Minneapolis last week to report on the crackdown and how local residents were reacting.
I had packed my medical kit, full face respirator, helmet and a couple tourniquets, essentials for my reporting bag when I make trips to dangerous and potentially violent areas. I also brought layers upon layers of warm clothing, as temperatures were expected to drop to 20 below in the coming days. I knew the ICE raids and the community’s response had been intense across the region, but I wasn’t fully prepared for what I’d end up seeing playing out in the streets.
In my few days in Minnesota, I’ve been witness to countless scenes that remind me of moments I’ve seen during previous trips covering conflicts around the world. I watched heavily armored federal units roll through quiet neighborhoods. In a grocery store parking lot, angry residents screamed at agents, demanding they leave the city. Masked and armed government agents pointed weapons toward me and some protesters during an encounter in the middle of the afternoon. Curious guests in a hotel elevator wondered why I was carrying around a medical pack and gas mask. Local residents thanked me for being there to witness the situation. A drunk man at a hotel bar cursed at me, saying the media was at fault. The wars we’ve carried out as a nation abroad have come home.
On my first day out reporting, I came upon an incident that had been unfolding for over an hour. Late in the afternoon on Thursday, Jan. 22, three construction workers clung to a roof, bracing themselves against the slanted plywood of an unfinished two-story house on the far south side of Minneapolis. Federal agents had massed in the house and in cars on the street, conducting a raid on the construction site. The agents called for the workers to come down. They refused. They stayed on the roof, exposed to the elements in negative 4 degree weather.
I stood outside the house looking up at the men on the roof, wondering how they were surviving in only high-visibility vests and work clothing. Onlookers begged the agents to let them bring the men blankets. They were told to stay out of the building.
Other construction workers milled about the snow-covered site as their co-workers hung on above. Some cursed at the officers. One worker told the men to come down before they freeze to death. “You can at least go to a warm cell,” he shouted. One young, white worker stuck his middle finger in the face of agents idling in their car. “Fuck you,” he screamed as he stomped around the site. A half dozen onlookers had assembled as well, shouting encouragement to the men above and asking the agents for compassion.
The three men remained on the roof as the young, white construction worker argued angrily with the agents for almost an hour.
Finally, as the time approached 5 p.m., the agents left.
Onlookers rushed into the building and brought the men down to wrap them in blankets. “You’re OK now,” they reassured the men. “You did great.”
On Friday, I arrived in South Minneapolis as protesters gathered, shouting, filming and blowing whistles at armored agents in a pickup. After a few minutes, the agents threw tear gas into the small crowd of onlookers and sped away. Gas drifted through the snowy streets, passing cute two-story houses and short, leafless trees. My throat burning, I crouched to the ground, coughing up the irritants behind a snowbank.
I couldn’t have known that less than a day later, in a similar situation, Customs and Border Protection agents would kill a man by shooting him multiple times in the back as they pinned him to the ground. Pretti died while filming agents and trying to help a woman as he was pepper sprayed. In the unfolding chaos in the hours after the shooting, I watched as agents unloaded tear gas on a couple hundred furious protesters who had assembled at the site of the shooting. Heavily armored law enforcement faced off against a crowd of unarmed protesters carrying signs and screaming for justice and retribution.
Peter DiCampo
It was 9:07 a.m. on Saturday morning when I learned that someone had been shot outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue. It would be hours before I heard the name Alex Pretti and watched the grisly videos of CBP agents shooting him to death. But knowing that Minneapolis was on edge following the death of Renee Good, also killed by federal agents, I grabbed my camera and the warmest clothing I could find. I rushed out of my house. By 9:29 a.m., I was in my car texting a group of fellow photographers “omw.”
Yellow police tape and federal agents lined the scene of the shooting, keeping everyone about a block away in every direction. A small crowd gathered. The first person I recognized wasn’t another journalist, it was my neighbor. “Peter!” she cried, and told me she wasn’t sure what was happening, just that she had also heard about the shooting and wanted to get down there. She sobbed into my arms for a minute, then we parted ways.
More agents gathered. Many wore gas masks. More residents and others ready to protest another killing arrived. A young man stood at the edge of the yellow tape and yelled; an older woman hugged him to try to calm him down. The anger of the crowd was palpable. “ICE agents: Get out of Minneapolis,” they screamed.
I do not have the words to articulate how it feels to watch this unfold in Minneapolis, a city that I have grown to know and love after moving here a few years ago. The journalists who flocked here over the past few weeks are people I have run into while on assignment in hot spots all over the world. Now they were in my home city.
As crowds grew, agents fired tear gas to keep them back. Crowds would then briefly disperse, but some agents would grab and detain people regardless. The crowds reformed quickly, and the cycle of tear gas, detentions and regrouping continued.
After one bout of tear gas, I stumbled away, doubled over and coughing. “Come inside!” I heard someone yell. I looked up and saw a woman opening the door to an apartment building. She wasn’t yelling to me but to two photographers I know. I stumbled toward them, and the three of them saw me, and all extended the invitation: “Come inside!”
I was grateful to be out of the tear gas, and I was grateful to be warm. That day’s high temperature was well below zero; at one point, I looked down and realized frozen condensation had iced my camera dials and buttons in place.
The other two photographers and I made our way to the rooftop and spent the next hour-plus photographing from above. We overlooked the scene of the shooting and could see the FBI examining it and the line of protesters and agents going back and forth in three different directions.
We watched as the federal presence finished at the shooting scene and packed up. They slowly backed out, firing tear gas at protesters who ran at them as they drove away.
We went back down to the street. Protesters gathered at the next block, and a similar scene played out there, this time with city and state police. “Why aren’t you protecting us?” one person yelled at them. Another protestor tried to calm the crowd down, but people were fed up: “Fuck your pacifism,” I heard someone yell.
Tear gas was fired, people dispersed and the police slowly backed out. Eventually, without federal agents and police around, the mood shifted from chaos to something more somber.
As I took a moment to breathe, I realized that the final standoff had taken place right in front of Cheapo Records, where I went record shopping on my birthday a couple years back. And the events of the entire day — the shooting, the protests, the tear gassing — all unfolded on a stretch of Nicollet Avenue called Eat Street, known for having many of the best restaurants in town, with cuisines from all over the world that showcase the city’s diversity. I knew then that walking these streets would never feel the same.
People made their way to the site of Alex Pretti’s death. There was still yellow tape around it, now tied haphazardly around trash cans. A small bloodstain was visible on the pavement.
Quietly, they began to build a memorial.
This story originally appeared on ProPublica
