Minnesota is an upper Midwestern state with a history of welcoming immigrants and refugees. In the 1890s, 40% of the state’s population was foreign-born. Today, it’s just over 6%, well below the national average. It has, however, become the epicenter of the Trump Administration’s war for racial purity.
In recent weeks, as thousands on the just side of American history in the great city of Minneapolis, Minnesota have stood bravely for human decency, we witnessed the other side commit and immediately justify two openly visible murders by ICE agents.
On 7 January, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) thug Jonathan Ross murdered mother-of-three Renee Good as she attempted to navigate her vehicle past him and away from other armed, masked “agents.”
As Good turned her wheels away from Ross, and assured him, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” Ross fired three shots and took her life. Moments later, ICE denied a doctor on the scene to approach and attempt to save Good as she bled out.
Ten shots
On 24 January, we again saw ICE thugs fire 10 shots in less than 5 seconds into Alex Pretti, murdering him just moments after he had attempted to use his own body to shield a woman from further attacks, shortly after an ICE thug had knocked her to the ground.
Regime leaders quickly blamed Good and Pretti for their own murders. Donald Trump spewed that Good “viciously ran over” an officer, while puppy-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared her a “domestic terrorist.”
Murdered
Border Patrol head Greg Bovino declared that ICE had fired defensive shots after Pretti had approached them with a gun, while Noem declared he had “attacked” officers.
While Pretti had a legal permit to carry – a common thing in the U.S. – he was visibly brandishing a phone to record ICE actions, no video shows him holding a gun, and one video appears to show an ICE agent taking a gun from his waist before he was murdered.
When Trump appointed U.S. Attorney Bill Assayli posted that approaching a federal officer with a gun makes it likely “legally justified” to kill you, even the National Rifle Association called this idea “dangerous and wrong,” also calling for a “full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
The far-right militia-supporting Gun Owners of America declared, “Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm.”
American heroes
Renee Good and Alex Pretti are American heroes, and we will remember their names as long as we have breath in our bodies.
Sadly, these are not the only individuals who have died in ICE custody – and most have been immigrants with brown skin, not white American citizens like Pretti and Good.
In 2025, 32 people have died in ICE custody, the highest number in two decades in an agency that, as of mid-December, held 68,440 people in custody, some 75% with no criminal convictions.
The names of those who died in 2025 are Genry Ruiz Guillén, Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, Maksym Chernyak, Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez, Brayan Garzón-Rayo, Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, Marie Ange Blaise, Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado, Jesus Molina-Veya, Johnny Noviello, Isidro Pérez, Tien Xuan Phan, Chaofeng Ge, Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, Oscar Rascon Duarte, Santos Banegas Reyes, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, Miguel Ángel García Medina, Huabing Xiem, Leo Cruz-Silva, Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh, Josué Castro Rivera, Gabriel Garcia Aviles, Kai Yin Wong, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, Pete Sumalo Montejo, Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, Jean Wilson Brutus, Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, Delvin Francisco Rodriguez and Nenko Stanev Gantchev.
Rampant violations of 4th and 5th Amendment rights by ICE occur regularly in Minneapolis and around the country – with ICE operations also currently ongoing in Maine, Arizona, and Washington State.
The 4th Amendment bars illegal searches and seizures absent “probable cause” that an individual has committed a crime; the 5th holds that no person can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Constitutional violations
Displaying its commitment to authoritarianism, an internal Homeland Security memo authorized ICE goons to enter the homes of those suspected of being undocumented immigrants without a judicial warrant – a policy change and a bold-faced 4th Amendment violation.
Constitutional violations are being committed against immigrants, U.S. citizens, and Indigenous people (who are also U.S. citizens). The Trump regime also appears to be using its bullying policies in an attempt to leverage other goals.
When reports emerged that members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe had been detained by ICE, the tribe’s president indicated that federal officials had offered the “option” of entering into an “immigration agreement” to gain “easier access to information” about possibly detained tribal members.
Of late, the regime has been pressing tribes to enter into agreements to hold people captured by ICE. ICE denies that tribal members were detained, though other examples of 4th Amendment violations of tribal members have been documented.
ICE banned
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council unanimously rejected a Section 287(g) agreement that would have integrated their police into ICE operations and also banned ICE from the reservation, as did the Cheyenne River Lakota.
While DHS head Kristi Noem served as Governor of South Dakota, she was banned from nine Indian reservations in the state after attempting to interfere with tribal efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19 in their lands and baselessly accusing tribes of working with drug cartels.
State law violation
As the mid-term elections approach, and public opinion polls show a steady decline in favorability ratings of Trump, the regime also appears to be using ICE attacks to press for access to state voter rolls.
Unwilling to sort out and release some 2 documents files related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and following the murder of Alex Pretti, Trump sycophant and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi offered Minnesota Governor Tim Walz a possible ICE withdrawal if the state handed over its voter rolls – in violation of state law.
The Trump regime has already sued Minnesota and 23 states in an attempt to gain access to its voter data. Given the rampant election denial in Trump circles and the well-documented effort to overturn the 2020 election with a slate of fake electors, this must be closely watched.
Overturn elections
All across the country, people must prepare for the possibility that attempts will be made to overturn midterm elections that will likely see the Republicans lose control of at least the U.S. House.
Minnesota is also showing that resistance is not futile. Cracks in the regime are showing. Some Republican leaders and law enforcement officers have begun speaking out about their concerns about ICE actions, and Trump has recently softened some of his rhetoric and attempted to talk to governors.
Border Patrol head Greg Bovino was recently removed from Minneapolis to be replaced by Trump “border czar” Tom Homan.
People must prepare for the possibility that attempts will be made to overturn midterm elections that will likely see the Republicans lose control of at least the U.S. House
These, however, should be considered public relations moves given that Homan is a deeply racist figure who has given voice to white nationalist “great replacement” nonsense, met with Proud Boys in the ramp up to ICE’s attacks on American communities, and supported the regime’s most egregious polices, including family separation.
‘They’re gonna win’
Prominent far rightists continue to amp up support for ICE actions. Following the murder of Alex Pretti, MAGA troll Steve Bannon cast protests in Minneapolis as a “well thought through effort to invade the country,” declaring, “If you blink in Minneapolis, they’re gonna overwhelm you, and they’re gonna win.”
Jack “Pizzagate” Posobiec declared the protests a product of “Soros buses,” the antisemitic canard that places liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros behind societal “evils.
And white nationalist Nick Fuentes said of Renee Good’s murder, “I think it’s good that she died.” Calling Alex Pretti a “race traitor,” he said, “We are thoroughly in the Trump era…one less asshole in the world.” On Telegram, Fuentes declared, “You CANNOT support mass deportations while also opposing government violence.”
The world is watching Minneapolis, Minnesota.
As they watch they are seeing the latest chapter in clashes between the two enduring sides of America play out. One side, that since the founding and through the Reconstruction and Civil Rights movement, has mustered lies and violence to defend white supremacy.
And another side, our side, also extending back to colonial times and through our two great Reconstructions, that has fought for genuine democracy in a society that has always been multi-racial and multi-cultural – even if, as IREHR founder Leonard Zeskind told us years ago, many in the Ivory Towers of U.S. universities only began significantly embracing this fact in the 1960 and 1970s.
Resisting authoritarianism
As Minneapolis is showing the world how to resist authoritarianism, we must keep in mind that this is not just about the Trump regime. The current situation was brought about by social movements displaying a range of deeply anti-democratic and racist ideologies, including white and Christian nationalists and paramilitarists.
The movement building on the cold streets of Minneapolis must be built upon, not only to counter this authoritarian regime, but to prepare for the decades-long fight that will be necessary to defeat these racist and authoritarian social movements.
But Minneapolis is showing us one thing for sure – that many in this country know on which side of history they stand, and that by standing together, we can chart a path to defeat the racist forces that have long fought against genuine multi-racial democracy in the United States.
