Two citizens were killed at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during encounter in the streets of Minneapolis. Renée Nicole Good, 37, was killed on Jan 7. Seventeen days later, on Jan 24., Alex Pretti, 37, was also killed in Minneapolis, and the public deserves a clear explanation of what happened. Good was a U.S. citizen and a mother of three. She was shot and killed on Wednesday morning. According to Good’s ex-husband, she had just dropped off their 6-year-old at school, roughly 7 minutes away from the site of the incident. Pretti was an intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Multiple videos showed Pretti filming ICE officers after helping a woman who had been pushed to the ground by an ICE agent. Federal officials have claimed the shootings happened in self-defense, saying Good attempted to use her vehicle to run over an officer, and Pretti was threatening agents with a gun. However, state and local officials have pushed back on the description of the events, and the video footage has raised more questions about both interactions with agents.
Even without knowing every detail yet, we know this: people have been killed in the street and the public is being told that ICE’s role in the situation was justified. That pattern has become far too common. When someone is killed by law enforcement, the first official explanation often gets treated like the final one. Sometimes it turns out to be accurate. Other times it does not. Either way, the public deserves a full and transparent investigation before anyone tries to close the case in the court of public opinion.
These incidents also happened during a period of heightened federal enforcement. Minneapolis has also seen multiple incidents of ICE activity in recent weeks with two residential deaths this month. In any city, a high-profile death involving federal agents wouldn’t draw scrutiny. In Minneapolis, rust in law enforcement has been consistently tested this month with accounts of multiple ICE invasions. The continued use of unjustified violence on innocent Americans is guaranteed to spark tension.
But that being said, Good and Pretti must be remembered for who they were outside of these incidents. People close to Good have described her as a caring parent with a strong creative side. She studied English, wrote poetry, and was known for being devoted to her children and family. Pretti’s family has said he was “a kind hearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends. ICE took both away and their impacts will never be forgotten. What makes this case so upsetting is how quickly the focus shifts away from the person who was killed and toward institutional self-preservation.
The federal government rushed to release official statements to try and justify ICE’s actions. Then the conversation narrows to whether the policy was technically followed or not, which completely disregards that the government is literally allowing open gun violence in the streets. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are not talking points, and they were not disposable. They were people who were cared about deeply by those close to them. If we can’t even pause and acknowledge that kind of loss before we rush to justify it, then we have already ac-cepted something we should be refusing.
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